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l^nglisli    Atrocities    in 

Ireland 


A   Compilation  of  Facts  from  Court 
and  Press  Records 


By 


KATHERINE  HUGHES 


WITH  A  FOREWORD  BY  HON.  JAMES  T).  PHELAN 


( 


George  Washington's  adopted  son,  George  Washington  Parke  Custis, 
speaking  at  the  City  Hall,  Washington,  on  July  20,  1826,  stated: 

"When  you  felt  the  full  force  of  the  Lion's  merciless  fangs,  who  first 
gave  you  aid,  not  of  words,  but  of  deeds? 

"...  And  with  such  revelations  as  these,  can  you,  will  you,  dare 
you,  Americans,  talk  of  interference,  and  withhold  your  voice  from  a 
general  acclaim,  which  would  thimder  in  this  land  tfil  its  echoes  reach 
the  Emerald  Isle,  in  a  prayer  for  Ireland's  deliverance?  If  there  is  an 
American  who  does  not  feel  for  the  wrongs  of  that  country  which  so 
nobly  contributed  to  the  establishment  of  our  rights,  I  pronounce 
him  recreant  to  the  feelings  of  virtue,  honor  and  gratitude. 

"And  my  country's  self,  if  she  decline  to  give  only  her  poor  opinions 
of  the  miseries  of  those  who  gave  their  toil  and  blood  that  she  might 
be  great,  free  and  happy — when  misfortunes  next  assail  her,  may  she 
not  find  the  friend  she  once  found  in  Ireland.  ... 

"But  let  not  Ireland  despair.  .  .  .  My  country's  friend  in  my  coun- 
try's utmost  need.  May  die  soon  be  relieved  from  the  Lion's  grasp, 
for  the  Lion  fondles  ere  it  kills." 


PRICE  10  CENTS 


PubHabea  by 

FRIENDS  OF  IRISH  FREEDOM,  Inc. 

280  Broadway,  New  York 


,'■» 


%' 


'Vh:..."-^^\       .'",*♦». 


^^■h" 


341.  ^ 


» 


\ 


\^ 


Upon  his  arrival  in  America,  Sir  Auckland 
Geddes,  the  British  Ambassador,  speaking  on  be- 
half of  the  British  Government,  said  (April  26, 
1920) : 

**There  is  no  quarrel  between  England  and  Ire- 
land. It  takes  two  to  make  a  quarrel,  and  (his 
generation  of  Englishmen  has  steadily  refused  to 
quarrel  with  Ireland.'* 

In  this  compilation  of  Court  and  Press  Records 
of  England's  military  rule  in  Ireland,  the  public 
will  find  the  reply  to  the  British  Ambassador,  as 
in  Custis*  day — **the  Lion  fondles  ere  it  kills.'* 


...Contents;... 


'^^ 


I. 

Englishmen  Condemn  British  Militarism  in  Ireland 

Page 
.      6 

II. 

Englishmen  Pay  Tribute  to  Irish  Republican  Party 

8 

III. 

Court  and  Press  Records  of  31,482  admitted  British  Military  Out- 
rages IN  Ireland,  from  May  1,  1916  to  March  1,  1920     .         .                 .10 

» 

(a) 

Murders 

63     11 

(6) 

Deportations 

2,162     14 

(c) 

Armed  Assaults 

609    16 

(d) 

Raids (By  May  1,  over  22,000)  . 

19,423    20 

W 

Arrests    .......... 

6,167    23 

(/) 

Sentences          ......... 

2,107    30 

(g) 

Proclamations  and  Suppressions          ..... 

389    31 

(A) 

Suppressions  of  Newspapers       ...... 

Coiuts-Martial 

53    33 
519    34 

IV. 

Miscellaneous  Outrages 

.     36 

V. 

Crimes  Attributed  to  Sinn  Fein 

.     45 

VI. 

191C 

[  AND  1920 

.     54 

VII. 

America's  Interest  in  This 

.     58 

Qism^^u  :U£<:s^^^^^ 


FOREWORD 

s. 

I  have  followed  closely  the  history  of  English-Irish  relations,  and  I  have  always  be- 
lieved that  a  statement  of  facts  is  more  eloquent  than  the  expression  of  opinion. 

The  Irish,  an  ancient  race,  enjoyed  a  civilization  and  disseminated  learning  before  the 
,  invasion  by  England.  They  resent  in  this  enlightened  age  the  denial  of  their  liberty  and 
the  indignities  and  cruelties,  which  have  been  practised  upon  them.  Ireland  will  only 
be  peaceful  when  she  is  free;  and  the  influence  of  the  Irish  throughout  the  world,  unless 
freedom  be  granted,  will  be  an  implacable  and  disturbing  element.  The  only  permanent 
peace  is  a  peace  of  justice. 

It  can  be  proved  out  of  the  mouths  of  Englishmen  that  Ireland  is  a  victim  of  injustice: 

James  Bryce  has  said  of  past  relations  that  "they  saw  Irish  manufactures  destroyed  for 
the  sake  of  English  manufacturers,  Irish  revenue  jobbed  away  .  .  .  England  did  nothing 
for  Ireland  and  suffered  her  to  do  nothing  for  herself " 

Goldwin  Smith,  an  eminent  English  authority,  said  that  during  all  Irish  disturbances, 
ordinary  crimes  were  very  small  and  that  political  crime,  so-called,  was  the  answer  made 
by  an  otherwise  defenseless  people  against  merciless  coercion.  He  adds,  "In  plain  truth, 
the  secret  tribunals  which  administered  the  Whiteboy  code  were  to  the  people  the  organs 
of  a  wild  law  of  social  morality." 

Edmund  Burke  at  the  time  of  the  American  Revolution,  in  defending  the  Colonies  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  said,  "I  pardon  something  to  the  spirit  of  Liberty,"  and  Lord 
Chatham  said  that  if  he  were  an  American  as  he  was  an  Englishman,  while  British  troops 
remained  in  his  coimtry,  never  would  he  lay  down  his  arms. 

The  Irish  are  actuated  by  the  spirit  of  Liberty,  and  they  have  won  the  applause  of  the 
£     world  because  they  are  resolved  never  to  lay  down  their  arms. 

I  trust  the  educational  value  of  this  little  book  will  serve  to  create  a  public  opinion  to 
»     which  even  England  will  some  day  have  to  yield.     It  would  be  wise  for  her  to  do  so  now 
in  the  interest  of  English  seciuity  and  world  peace. 

America  has  saved  England  in  the  late  War  from  utter  annihilation,  and  the  voice  of 
America  ought  to  be  potent  in  her  councils.  The  Senate  and  the  House  of  Representatives 
of  the  United  States  have  truly  expressed,  I  believe,  American  public  opinion. 

James  D.  Phelan. 


3 


h 


ENGLISH  ATROCITIES  IN  IRELAND. 


I. 

ENGLISHMEN  CONDEMN  BRITISH  MILITARISM  IN  IRELAND. 

The  President  of  the  Irish  Republic  to-day — as  Washington  once  was  on  behalf  of 
America — ^is  wont  to  point  out  to  his  American  audiences  that  there  is  in  Ireland  now  a 
Government  of  the  people,  constitutionally  framed  and  elected  by  the  ballots  of  the  Irish 
people  in  December,  1918. 

This  is  a  Government  of  RIGHT. 

But  in  Ireland  to-day  there  is  also  an  alien  government,  based  on  might,  maintained  by 
an  army  of  occupation  and  by  extreme  msasuras  of  force  imposed  upon  the  Irish  people. 

This  is  a  Government  of  MIGHT. 

Yet  this  question  is  being  asked  all  over  America  to-day: 

"Isn't  Coercion  a  thing  of  the  Past?  .  .  .  Why  do  Ireland's  sympathizers 
claim  England  is  making  the  Irish  people  suffer  now?" 

Let  Englishmen  answer  that  question  themselves: 

COERCION. 

"Ireland  is  governed  under  a  system  of  coercion  such  as  there  has  not  been 
within  living  memory."  Westminster  Gazette,  16  December,  1919. 

IF  IN  AUSTRIA—! 

"Ireland  is  now  being  governed  under  military  law.  If  what  is  now  going 
on  in  Ireland  had  been  going  on  in  the  Austrian  Empire  all  England  would  be 
ringing  with  denunciation  of  the  tyranny  of  the  Hapsburgs  and  of  denying  people 
the  right  to  nile  themselves."  • 

Mr.  Herbert  Samuel,  Ex-Cabinet  Minister  at  St.  Albans,  December  8,  1919. 

DARKEST  SPOT  IN  WORLD. 

"Lord  French  is  at  present  Viceroy  of  Ireland,  which  is  the  darkest  of  the  dark 
spots  on  the  map,  not  of  Great  Britain,  but  of  the  world." 

Hon.    Herbert    Asquith,    June    2,    1919. 

FATAL  TO  ENGLAND'S  REPUTATION. 

"*  *  *  In  a  word,  every  institution  of  which  we  as  British  citizens  are  so 
proud — a  free  press,  freedom  of  speech,  liberty  of  the  subject  and  trial  by  jury — 
are  things  of  the  past  in  a  large  part  of  Ireland,  and  rule  by  military  force,  which  we 
sought  to  destroy  when  resorted  to  by  Germany,  is  an  established  fact  in  South 
and  Southwest  Ireland  to-day.  These  facts  are  fatal  to  our  reputation  for  na- 
'  tional  good  faith,  and  cannot  fail  to  prejudice  our  national  standing  in  the  eyes  of 
our  seS-goveming  Dominions  and. the  Dependencies." 

Extract  from  the  Report  of  the  Commission  of  the  British  Parliamentary  Labor  Party 
which  recently  visited  Ireland. 

DRASTIC  REPRESSION. 

"Those  who  have  followed  the  course  of  events  in  Ireland  during  the  past 
few  months  cannot  fail  to  note  the  steady  development  with  which  the  Execu- 
tive have  had  recourse  to  drastic  measures  of  repression." 

London    Times,     17th    December,     1919. 

OFFICIAL  PROVOCATION. 

"Everybody  knows  that  Ireland  is  a  singularly  crimeless  country  in  the  ordi- 
nary sense.  Is  it  a  matter  for  surprise  that  step  by  step  with  every  piece  of  re- 
pression there  has  been  a  new  outburst  of  disorder?    Of  course  there  is.     The 


figures  of  arrests  that  I  have  collected  from  the  newspapers  are  roughly  as  follows: 
— 1917,  719  arrests.  The  Right  Hon.  gentleman  and  associates  say : — 'More  armed 
force  to  keep  them  under,'  result,  1918 — 2,600  arrests.  More  force,  more  tanks, 
more  aeroplanes,  more  troops;  result,  1919 — 7,600  arrests.  Is  it  not  perfectly 
obvious,  if  indeed  we  did  not  already  know  it  a  priori,  that  the  policy  pursued 
merely  provokee  the  very  disorder  it  professes  to  do  away  with?" 
Capt.  Wedgwood  Benn,  M.P.,  in  the  English  House  of  Commons,  December  9th,  1919. 

"An  oppressive  and  exasperating  system  of  military  rule." 

AsQUlTH  at  Paisley,  January  30,  1920. 

A  VICIOUS  CIRCLE. 

"The  Government  of  Ireland  has  left  no  folly  undone.  It  is  alleged  that 
Dublin  Castle  is  deliberately  fanning  the  embers  ol  revolt.  ...  If  the  authori- 
ties had  designed  to  provoke  disorder,  they  would  not  have  needed  to  act  dif- 
ferently. Military  repression  always  gives  crime  its  oppw^rtunity,  and  crime 
makes  sterner  measures  necessary.     The  circle  must  be  broken  somewhere." 

London  Sunday  Times,  December  21st,  1919. 

FORTIFIED  FORTS. 

"Nearly  all  the  police  barracks  in  Ireland  are  now  fortified  forts.  Barbed 
wire  entrenchments  and  sandbag  barricades  are  dotted  over  the  country;  tanks 
and  armored  cars  patrol  their  roads.  Soldiers  in  full  fighting  kit  are  concen- 
trated in  disturbed  areas — and  young  Ireland  is  not  dismayed." 

London  Daily  Mail,  11th  December,  1919. 

THE  NAKED  SWORD. 

"Not  since  the  black  years  that  preceded  the  Union  has  Ireland  been  ruled 
so  nakedly  by  the  sword  or  have  the  wielders  of  the  sword  encountered  so  fierce  a 
resistance  to  their  will." 

London  Daily  News,  12th  December,  1919. 

"Dublin  Castle  is  turning  prosperous  ploughshares  into  swords." 

Daily  Mail,  December  12th,  1919. 

BLUNT  TRUTHS. 

"The  most  abominable  outrage  of  all  is  Lord  French's  and  Mr.  Macpherson's 
outrage  on  human  liberty." 

London  Nation,  January  20th,  1920. 

"The  fact  is.  Castle  Government  in  Ireland  is  infamous." 

Capt.  W.  Benn,  English  M.P.,  in  Edinburgh  Evening  News,  7th  January,  1920. 

"The  present  government  of  Ireland  by  the  sword." 

London  Daily  News,  3rd  January,  1920. 

"There  are  as  many  soldiers  to  be  seen  any  night  in  Dublin  as  in  a  British  base 
like  Calais,  at  the  height  of  the  War," 

Manchester  Guardian,  31st  December,  1919. 

MILITARISM  TRIUMPHS. 

"Militarism  is  simply  triumphant  here." 

J.  H.  Thomas,  M.P.,  during  visit  to  Dublin,  February  6th,  1920. 

TO  BE  RID  OF  SINN  FEIN. 

"The  present  military  domination  of  Ireland  is  no  less  hideous  than  was  that 
of  Belgium  by  the  German  Imperialists.  Many  Uniom"sts  in  Ireland  are  long- 
ing for  an  opportunity  which  will  allow  the  Government  under  cover  of  legality 
to  shoot  down  the  Sinn  Feiners  wholesale,  and  so  rid  themselves  of  determined 
enemies  without  a  break  with  America  by  ostensibly  outraging  all  public  moral- 
ity. Again  and  again  I  have  heard  such  opinions  expressed  by  influential  men 
occupying  important  positions." 

Statement  of  a  British  Officer  in  August,  1919. 

6 


i 


REPEAT  SHERMAN'S  MARCH. 

Edward  Price  Bell,  an  American  correspondent  in  London,  cabled  to  this  country  in 
December,  1919,  that  a  distinguished  Englishman  told  him  "Sherman's  march  to  the  sea 
would  be  repeated  in  Ireland,"  if  that  country  persisted  in  its  defiance  to  English  will. 

PLAYING  FOR  REBELLION. 

"It  seems  inconceivable  that  any  responsible  members  of  Parliament  or  poli- 
ticians would  deliberately  advocate  the  provocation  of  an  outbreak  in  Ireland 
in  the  hope  that  Home  Rule  might  thus  be  drowned  in  a  sea  of  blood  and  repres- 
sion; but  we  fear  there  are  some  who  would  contemplate  a  rebellion  in  Ireland 
at  this  time  with  thoughtless  equanimity." 

London   Times,  November  27,  1919. 

PROVOKING  A  RISING. 

Mr.  W.  N.  Ewer,  special  correspondent  of  the  Daily  Herald,  writing  on  February  9th, 
1920,  from  Dublin  says: — 

"It  is  no  mere  surmise,  but  a  known  fact,  based  on  authentic  evidence,  that 
there  has  been  for  some  time  past  a  group  of  officials  which  strongly  advocates 
the  provocation  and  bloody  suppression  of  an  armed  rising." 

ENGLAND'S  AIM  IN  TERRORISM. 

These  statements  have  all  been  made  within  a  year,  not  by  Irishmen  but  by  Britishers 
— men  who  are  opposed  to  Sinn  Fein  and  its  gospel  of  Independence. 

They  unanimously  reveal  a  fear  of  sinister  forces  at  work  in  the  military  occupation 
of  Ireland  at  the  present  time. 

It  was  a  similar  use  of  tactics  that  decimated  the  Irish  patriots  of  1798,  paved  the  way 
to  the  "Union"  and  threw  back  Ireland's  struggle  for  freedom  120  years. 

WHY  PROVOKE  INSURRECTION? 

From  the  viewpoint  of  England's  strategists  in  Dublin  Castle  there  has  been  one  over- 
whelming reason  why  an  Ireland  that  persisted  to  defy  English  Government  must  be 
brought  out  into  the  open,  facing  machine-guns  unarmed — as  the  Zulus  were  and  the 
Afghanistan  peoples  more  recently. 

The  reason  was  calmly  stated  by  Lord  French  himself  in  an  interview  last  January 
given  to  Mr.  M.  Marsillac  of  "Le  Journal,"  Paris,  when  he  complained  that  the  root  of 
the  Irish  question  to-day  was  the  fact  that  there  were  from  100,000  to  200,000  young 
men  in  the  country  who  in  normal  times  would  have  emigrated,  and  that  there  would  be 
no  peace  in  the  covmtry  until  these  young  men  got  out  of  it.   *  *  * 

ENGLAND'S  IDEAL— AN  IRELAND  WITHOUT  IRISHMEN. 

"With  armed  forces  at  his  disposal,  as  numerous  as  the  forces  with  which  Wel- 
lington overthrew  Napoleon,  the  Viceroy  has  shown  that  he  is  wholly  unable  to 
maintain  order  in  the  political  sense,  though  tanks  and  motor  lorries  are  now 
the  commonest  sight  on  country  roads,  and  Ireland  is. dragooned  even  more 
thoroughly  than  General  von  Bissing  dragooned  Belgium.  While  soldiers  and 
police  are  rounding  up  representative  citizens  as  political  offenders,  footpads 
can  rob  and  harry  with  immum'ty,  and  every  cross-Charmel  burglar  and  crook 
dreams  of  Ireland  as  miners  dream  of  a  new  Klondyke.  Lord  French  has  pro- 
noimced  the  final  condemnation  of  his  own  record  in  Ireland.  Until  that  country, 
so  he  told  a  French  journalist,  has  been  depleted  of  100,000  to  200,000  of  its  young 
men,  there  is  no  hope  for  the  policy  which  he  was  selected  to  enforce  at  the  point 
of  the  bayonet.  This  has  always  been  the  favorite  specific  of  English  rulers  for 
-  Irish  discontents,  but  few  of  them,  since  Cromwell,  have  admitted  it  as  blimtly 
as  LordTrench.  Their  ideal  is  an  Ireland  without  Irishmen,  and  when  Irishmen 
have  the  temerity  to  object,  their  opposition  is  held  to  be  conclusive  proof  of  their 
criminality." 

Freeman's  Journal,  February  6th,  1920. 

"Lord  French  confides  to  a  French  journalist  his  scheme  for  the  inmiediate 
compulsory  immigration  of  180,000  more.  Cromwell  sent  the  young  Irish  to 
the  Barbadoes.  The  military  government  of  to-day  wants  to  revive  Cromwel- 
lianism  on  a  larger  scale." 

Ibid,   January   31st,    1920. 


11. 

ENGLISHMEN  PAY  TRIBUTE  TO  IRISH  REPUBLICANS. 

"What  type  of  men  are  these  upon  whom  England  makes  war  in  Ireland  to-day; 
and  of  what  nature  the  movement  which  she  seeks  to  crush — with  martial  law — 
•  with  seizure  of  national  banks  and  funds — prohibition  and  proclamations  of  all 
political  and  national  societies — prohibition  of  the  national  language  in  public 
assemblies — kidnapping  of  leaders  held  for  months  in  prison  without  charge  or 
trial — arrests  of  thousands  of  men  and  women  and  deportation  of  other  hundreds 
— with  over  20,000  raids  on  private  houses,  searched  while  soldiery  with  fixed 
bayonets  threaten  and  siuround  the  startled  inhabitants?" 

Again  we  shall  seek  for  replies  from  Englishmen. 

The  Irish  Republic  having  been  proclaimed  by  the  Irish  Volunteers  and  Labor  Army 
of  Ireland  in  1916,  was — on  the  dispersal  of  these  groups — ntu-sed  through  the  most  trying 
months  of  its  infancy  by  the  Sinn  Fein  political  group.  To  their  aid  eventually  all  other 
groups  of  genuine  Irish  life  rallied,  and  the  name—Sinn  Fein — is  now  indiscriminately 
applied  to  over  four-fifths  of  the  Irish  people  who  stand  to-day  for  an  Irish  Republic. 

SPEARHEAD  OF  IRELAND. 

"Sinn  Fein  is  the  most  compact  and  the  boldest  expression  in  terms  of  politics 
of  all  the  forces  and  influences  that  are  helping  on  the  regeneration  of  Ireland. 
It  is  the  political  spearhead  *  *  *  of  Ireland,"  wrote  Sydney  Brooks,  the 
English  publicist  in  the  Morning  Post,  after  months  of  studying  the  New  Ireland 
in  1907. 

"The  tenacity  of  the  Sinn  Fein  is  the  tenacity,"  he  said,  "not  of  obstinacy  but 
of  a  cool,  far-seeing  and  inflexible  pvupose."  He  described  these  pioneers  of  the 
Irish  Republican  movement  as  "clear-eyed,  forceful  men  who  mean  business  and 
have  backbone" — a  body  of  men  with  "bold,  definite  and  sensible  views  on  educa- 
tion, tillage,  port  dues,  afforestation  *  *  *  an  Irish  Merchant  Marine  *  ♦  *  " 
— men  who  are  "strongly  constructive."  .  .  . 

THE  WORK  OF  SINN  FEIN. 

"Sinn  Fein  it  is  true,  has  not  stopped  at  demands.  It  has  set  up  its  own  Par- 
liament under  the  title  of  Dail  Eireann,  selected  Cabinet  Ministers  and  Heads  of 
Departments,  appointed  ambassadors  to  act  in  its  name  at  Washington  and  Paris, 
nominated, Consuls  some  of  whom  are  already  at  work  in  European  countries, 
arranged  to  float  a  State  Loan  and  established  Arbitration  Boards  which  through- 
out the  greater  part  of  Ireland  are  superseding  British  Courts  of  Law.  The  Castle 
meets  each  new  development  in  the  orthodox  Castle  way  by  proclamations, 
arrests  and  the  Jedburgh  justice  of  MiUtary  Courts." 

London  Daily   News,  December  12,  1919. 

SINN  FEIN  SUPREME. 

"The  Irish  (English)  Government  has  proclaimed  Sinn  Fein,  but  the  order 
has  had  the  effect  of  throwing  water  on  lime.  Sinn  Fein  instead  of  being  sup- 
pressed, is  supreme.  Its  Intelligence  Department  is  so  superior  to  that  of  Dublin 
Castle  that  every  order  made  by  the  Irish  (English)  Government  is  anticipated 
and  eluded  by  the  most  obscure  Sinn  Fein  Club  in  the  most  desolate  region  of 
Ireland." 

Dublin  Correspondent,  Daily  Mail,  December  9th,  1919. 

ITS  HONESTY. 

"The  Sinn  Fein  frame  of  mind  is  as  open  as  a  book  to  any  one  who  can  read. 
The  leaders  are  absolutely  uncompromising.  In  a  sense  this  is  the  most  honest 
movement  of  the  kind  the  coimtry  has  experienced.  It  says  what  it  means  and 
sticks  to  it." 

Morning  Post's  Special  Correspondent,  Dublin,  December  17th,  1919. 

8 


ITS  INTELLECTUALISM. 

"Like  it  or  not,  we  have  aU  to  admit  that  where  you  find  an  active  intellectual 
centre  m  Ireland  to-day,  you  have  an  active  centre  of  Sinn  Fein."        '^^-^'^^^t^' 

London  Times  Special  Correspondent,  Dublin,  December  18, 1919. 

ITS  DISCIPLINE. 

intSenfr^oS/"  '^  "^*'^'  '^^*^"^^^^'  national,  disciplined  and  above  all 

Daily  Mail  Special  Correspondent,  Dublin,  December  15,  1919. 
ITS  ORGANIZATION. 

tioi?'^^  ^^""  ^^^"  ^^^  ^^  undoubtedly  shown  the  greatest  genius  for  organiza- 

Special  Correspondent,  London  Daily  Mail,  January  15,  1920. 

ITS  DECISION. 

"No  scheme  of  Home  Rule  short  of  RepubHcan  independence  will,  at  the  present 
moment,  satisfy  the  mass  of  the  Irish  people."  present 

Earl  of  Meath,    in    London    Times,    January    13,    1920. 


9 


III. 

COURT  AND  PRESS  REPORTS  OF  ENGLISH  ATROCITIES  IN 

IRELAND. 

This  vividly  illusttates  the  fact  which  mocks  mcxiern  claims  to  civilization;  that  while  men  quote  laws 
of  war  which  belligerent  nations  may  not  transgress,  the  world  looks  on  while  strong  nationsin  times  of  "world-       ■ 
peace"  harry  and  oppress  weaker  nations,  without  a  voice  being  raised  in  the  world's  chancellories.  \ 


In  bald  figures  the  acts  of  Military  Terrorism  committed  by  the  armed  forces  of  the 
English  Government  upon  the  people  of  Ireland  are: — 

STATEMENT  OF  OUTRAGES  BY  YEARS. 


. 

1916 

1917 

1918 

1919 

1920 

Total 

From  May 

To  3/1 

Murders 

38 

7 

6 

8 

4 

63 

Deportations 

1,949 

24 

91 

20 

.     78 

2,162 

Armed  Assaults  on  Unarmed 

Citizens 

* 

18 

81 

476 

34 

609 

Raids  on  Private  Houses, 

Burglaries,  etc. 

* 

11 

260 

13,782 

5,370 

19,423 

Arrests 

3,226 

349 

1,107 

969 

616 

6,157 

Sentences 

160 

269 

973 

636 

69 

2,107 

Proclamations  and  Suppressions 

♦  ♦ 

2 

N      32*** 

335 

20 

389 

Suppression  of  Newspapers 

13 

3 

12 

25 

**** 

63 

Coiuts  Martial 

199 

36 

62 

209 

13 

•  619 

•  No  totals  available. 
•*  Wholesale  raids  in  addition. 
*••  General  Suppressions  and  Proclamations. 
••••  28  papers  denied  Foreign  Circulation. 


1 


Total  6,586        719         2,624         16,450         6,104         31,482 

Since  March  1,  1920  this  total  of  31,482  has  been  enormously  increased.  During  the 
present  month,  April,  raids  of  houses  have  been  numerous  and  groups  of  prisoners,  fifty 
and  more  at  a  time,  have  been  thrown  into  jail  without  charge  or  trial. 

These  figxtres  are  necessarily  incomplete,  because  (1)  of  informality  with  which  many 
of  the  military  outrages  against  the  Irish  were  carried  out,  (2)  the  lack  of  court  trials, 

(3)  the  suppression  for  long  periods  of  the  Press  favorable  to  the  Irish  National  Cause, 

(4)  the  rigid  censorship  on  the  Irish  Press  with  regard  to  these  outrages,  and  (5)  the 
British  official  prohibition  through  a  great  portion  of  the  period  covered  which  forbade  the 
publication  of  all  outrages  committed  by  England's  forces  in  Ireland. 

A  most  sinister  fact  in  this  connection  is  that  most  of  the  men  arrested  in  the  opening 
months  of  1920  were  the  more  thoughtful  older  men — just  such  men  as  might  be  expected 
to  urge  restraint  upon  the  younger  men  in  case  of  extreme  provocation  from  the  British 
military. 


10 


Ill— (a). 
MURDERS  OF  IRISH  PATRIOTS— 63. 

"They  shall  be  remembered  for  ever, 
They  shall  be  alive  for  ever, 
They  shall  be  speaking  for  ever, 
The  people  shall  hear  them  for  ever." 

They  are  not  now  "hanging  men  and  women  for  the  Wearin'  o'  the  Green,"  for  hanging 
presupposes  a  trial  which  British  militarism 'prefers  to  evade,  but  they  are  shooting  or 
strangling  men  in  Ireland  for  wearing  the  Orange,  White  and  Green. 

The  policy  of  EngUsh  military  rule  is  one  not  only  of  coercion  but  of  assassination  for 
purposes  of  intimidation.  It  must  be  noted  that  Coroner's  Jtiries  in  Ireland  are  selected 
and  summoned  by  the  military  police  force,  whose  members  in  the  case  of  these  mtxrdered 
Irish  should  have  been  in  the  dock. 

Here  are  samples  of  yerdicts  by  Coroner's  Juries,  given  out  to  the  Press,  of  more  than 
a  score  of  cases  in  which  British  soldiers  or  police  are  definitely  charged  by  a  body  of  citizens 
chosen  by  the  police  themselves  as  being  responsible  for  these  murders.  (In  every  case 
the  gtulty  went  unptmished,  and  in  several  instances  they  were  promoted  for  good  service!) 

TYPICAL  CORONERS'  VERDICTS. 

PATRICK  BEALAN,  murdered  May  17,  1916: 

"We  find  that  PATRICK  BEALAN,  of  Dublin,  died  from  shock  and  hemor- 
rhage resulting  from  bullet  woimds  inflicted  by  a  soldier  or  soldiers  in  whose  cus- 
tody he  was  an  unarmed  and  inoffensive  prisoner." 

'    DANIEL  SCANLON,  murdered  July  14,  1917: 

"We  find  that  the  deceased,  DANIEL  SCANLON,  of  BaUybjunion,  County 
Kerry,  was  wilfully  miurdered  by  Constable  Lyons,  who  fired  the  shot,  and  Ser- 
geant Macauley  who  was  in  charge  of  the  firing  party." 
(Constable  Lyons  was  afterward  promoted  to  the  rank  of  Sergeant.) 

PATRICK  STUDDERT,  murdered  July  3,  1919: 

"We  find  that  the  death  of  PATRICK  STUDDERT,  fisherman,  Kilkee, 
resulted  from  a  bullet  woimd  deliberately  inflicted  by  Sergeant  Wolsley  of  the 
Scottish  Horse,  and  we  strongly  disapprove  of  the  miUtary  orders  given  in  this 
quiet  and  peaceful  district.  Sergeant  Wolsley  stated  he  fired  to  kill  as  those  were 
his  orders."  i 

i       FRANCIS  MURPHY,  murdered  August  23,  1919: 

"We  find  that  Francis  Murphy,  aged  fifteen,  of  Glan,  County  Clare,  was 
luilawfully  and  wilfully  miurdered  by  a  bullet  unlawfully  and  wilfully  fired  by 
members  of  the  miUtary  vmknown  to  us,  into  the  home  of  his  father,  John 
Murphy." 

-  MURDERS  REPORTED  IN  CENSORED  PRESS. 

These  are  but  some  of  the  verdicts,  picked  at  random  from- a  long  heartbreaking  list. 
The  quiet  fisherman^  the  lad  engaged  in  preparing  his  school  work  by  a  cottage  lamp 
— like  all  the  others,  they  had  given  no  provocation  for  the  mtu"der  that  suddenly  cut 
them  off  from  life.     Nor  did — 

THOMAS  RUSSELL,  dead  from  a  soldier's  bayonet  thrust,  given  in  his  back  as  he  was 

leaving  the  Carrigaholt  reading  room.  The  place  had  been  ordered  cleared  because  he 
was  teaching  a  class  of  the  Irish  language  that  Sunday  afternoon.  Captainlike,  Russell 
was  the  last  to  leave  the  room,  for  British  soldiers  in  Ireland  are  as  deadly  as  a  wreck  at 
sea,  and  the  rule  with  the  Irish  patriot  is:  "The  younger  and  weaker  to  safety  first."  None 
remained  behind  to  say  which  of  the  soldiers  was  guilty,  and  no  effort  was  made  to  have 

11 


i;  rn'MiOa!^ 


Sergeant  Duff  and  his  three  privates  produce  the  guilty  man.     Four  of  Russell's  pupils 
were  also  wounded  by  the  soldiers'  bayonets. 
On  and  on  the  list  reads: 

ABRAHAM  ALLEN 

MATTHEW  MURPHY 

JOHN  RYAN 

PATRICK  DUFFY 

PATRICK  GAVAN  (quietly  driving  a  cow  to  the  fair  when  he  was  killed). 

MICHAEL  WALSH 

LAWRENCE  KENNEDY  (whose  death  was  cabled  to  this  country  as  a  "Sinn  Fein 
outrage"  and  part  of  a  plot  upon  Dublin  Castle — ^but  whom  the  verdict  describes 
as  a  laborer  "killed  on  his  way  home  by  a  military  patrol,  and  we  consider  that 
the  military  acted  in  a  most  heartless  manner.") 

MICHAEL  DARCY,  of  Cooraclare,  whom  they  first  drove  into  the  river  and  then,  as    -^ 
the  verdict  continues: 

"The  police  fired  on  four  would-be  rescuers  of  the  drowning  boy  and  drove 
them  off."  (They  claimed  Darcy  fired  at  them,  but  it  was  proven  that  Darcy 
was  not  even  carrying  arms.) 

In  Febniary  of  this  year  RICHARD  O'DWYER,  a  merchant  of  Limerick  sitting  quietly 
in  his  shop  and  LENA  JOHNSTON  walking  quietly  home  from  her  work  were  killed  by 
rifle  shots  fired  by  Military  "goose-stepping"  through  Limerick. 

"We  strongly  condemn  the  indiscriminate  firing  of  the  patrol,"  the  verdict 
runs — the  Jury  perforce  calling  a  "patrol"  what  had  been  in  reality  one  of  the 
daily   "provocation  parades"  made  by  the  Military  throughout  Ireland  since 


the  New  Year. 


THREE  OUTSTANDING  MURDERS. 


Three  of  these  scores  of  murders  by  the  armed  forces  of  the  British  have  passed  into 
Irish  History— that  of  FRANCIS  SHEEHY  SKEFFINGTON.  the  weU-known  writer, 
lectvirer  and  pacifist,  in  Easter  Week,  1916 — of  THOMAS  ASHE,  known  and  loved  on 
both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  as  a  devoted  worker  in  the  revival  of  Gaelic  music  and  the  lan- 
guage— and  the  Lord  Mayor  of  Cork,  THOMAS  MacCURTAIN,  a  vigorous,  splendid 
young  man  assassinated  in  the  very  presence  of  his  wife  and  children. 

SKEFFINGTON,  who  never  swerved  from  his  pacifist  principles,  risked  his  life  more 
than  once  during  the  Easter  insiurection  to  rescue  wounded  British  as  well  as  Irish  from, 
the  zone  of  danger.  He  was  seized  and  shot  by  order  of  a  callous  British  officer.  His 
widow  was  ofifered  by  Premier  Asquith  a  house  and  a  compensation  of  $40,000  if  she  wovdd 
keep  silent  about  her  husband's  death — which  she  patriotically  refused  to  do. 

The  agony  of  THOMAS  ASHE  was  long  drawn  out.  In  the  post  mortem  examination 
his  throat  and  neck  showed  brtiises  and  sores.     The  verdict  ran: 

"We  find  that  THOMAS  ASHE  according  to  the  medical  evidence  of  Professor  i 
McWeeney,  Sir  Arthur  Chance  and  Sir  Thomas  Myles,  died  of  heart  failure  and 
congestion  of  the  lungs  on  the  25th  of  September,  1917,  caused  by  the  punishment 
of  taking  away  from  liis  cell  in  Mountjoy  Jail  the  bed,  bedding  and  boots  and 
being  left  to  he  on  the  cold  floor  for  fifty  hours,  and  then  subjected  to  forcible  feed- 
ing in  his  weak  condition  after  a  hunger  strike  of  five  or  six  days  *  *  *  That 
the  hunger  strike  was  directed  against  the  inhuman  punishment  inflicted  and 
as  a  protest  against  the  men  being  treated  as  criminals  when  demanding  to  be 
treated  as  political  prisoners. 

"We  find  that  the  taking  away  of  the  deceased's  bed,  bedding  and  boots  was 
an  unfeeling  and  barbarous  act  and  we  censure  the  Deputy  Governor  for  violat- 
ing the  Prison  Rules  and  inflicting  a  punishment  which  he  had  no  power  to  do,  but 
we  infer  he  was  acting  under  instructions  from  the  Prisons  Board  at  the  Castle, 
which  refused  to  give  evidence  and  doctunents  asked  for." 

The  cold  sentences  of  this  verdict  give  no  idea  of  the  suffering  of  Ashe  and  his  comrades 
dragged  out  in  their  weakened  condition  to  the  forcible  feeding — ^then  fixing  back  at  the 
end  upon  the  cold  bare  floor  of  their  cells,  and  on  one  occasion  even  thrust  into  an  under- 

12 


I 


ground  unlit  bare  hole.  All  Ireland  shook  with  indignation  at  the  revelation  of  these 
horrors,  and  in  protest  over  40,000  marched  in  the  funeral  procession  of  the  gifted  young 
educationalist,  who  in  courage,  high  endurance  and  patriotism  may  be  cited  as  a  type  of 
young  Irish  manhood  to-day — with  traditional  Irish  traits,  intensified  and  renewed  by  the 
revival  of  the  ancient  GaeUc  culture. 

"YOUR  SON  .  .  .  MURDERED  BY  MY  GOVERNMENT." 

Ashe  was  not  the  only  victim  of  English  jails  in  this  final  campaign  for  freedom.  In 
the  same  year — 1917 — ^four  other  Irish  patriots  died  as  a  result  of  harsh  treatment  in  jail : 

JOHN  WALLACE 

BERNARD  WARD  . 

WILLIAM  PARTRIDGE 

THOMAS  STOKES 

These  slow  official  murders  were  followed  by  two  others  in  1918  and  1919: 

RICHARD  COLEMAN 
PIERCE  McCAN,  T.  D. 

The  latter  had  been  held  in  Gloucester  Prison  for  over  nine  months  absolutely  without 
charge  or  trial — being  one  of  the  86  candidates  for  parliament  and  organizers  who  were 
seized  without  warning  and  carried  away  on  British  warships  in  May,  1918,  in  an  attempt 
to  ruin  their  party  at  the  coming  elections.  Pierce  McCan,  who  was  a  country  gentleman 
of  remarkable  physique,  high  culture  and  character  and  the  possessor  of  a  large  estate, 
was  so  ill  from  infiuenza  when  in  prison  that  the  prison  doctor  had  repeatedly  lu-ged  the 
authorities  to  permit  his  removal  to  a  hospital  outside  the  jail  as  the  only  hope  of  saving 
his  life.  So  much  was  this  doctor  impressed  by  the  brutality  of  the  officials  concerned 
that  he  afterwards  remarked  to  the  victim's  mother  that  although  he  blushed  as  an  Eng- 
lishman to  say  it,  her  son  had  been  murdered  by  his  Government. 

MURDER  CHARGED  TO  PREMIER. 

In  March,  1920,  the  Lord  Mayor  of  Cork  was  summoned  to  his  bedroom  door  by  a 
party  of  raiders  who  had  come  into  his  house  in  the  dead  of  night.  Although  he  had 
received  a  threatening  note  from  the  British  Black  Hand  group  in  Ireland,  the  family 
believed  this  to  be  but  another  of  the  20,000  night-raids  made  in  Ireland  since  1916  by  the 
poUce  and  soldiers.  The  disguised  men  spoke  commands  with  the  voices  of  the  miUtary 
poUce,  trained  to  command.  A  party  of  their  comrades  were  seen  with  police  discipline 
to  surround  the  house,  and  prevent  interference  from  outside. 

When  the  Lord  Mayor  came  out  half -clad  he  was  shot  repeatedly,  then  clubbed  with 
rifle-butts  as  he  lay  on  the  floor.  Having  accomplished  their  mission  the  eight  raiders  left 
the  house  abruptly,  leaving  the  wife  and  children  of  the  murdered  man  distraught  with 
fear. 

Shortly  after  a  lamplighter  saw  this  file  of  police,  marching  two  by  two,  admitted  to  a 
neighboring  poUce  barracks  after  a  Hght  rap  on  the  door. 

The  genesis  of  this  barbaric  outrage  is  revealed  in  the  coroner's  verdict : 

"We  find  that  the  late  Alderman  Thomas  MacCurtain,  lord  mayor  of  Cork,  died 
from  shock  and  hemorrhage  caused  by  bullet  wounds;  that  he  was  wilfully  mur- 
dered imder  circumstances  of  the  most  callous  brutality;  that  the  murder  was 
organized  and  carried  out  by  the  Royal  Irish  Constabulary,  officially  directed  by  the 
British  government,  and  we  return  a  verdict  of  wilful  murder  against  David  Lloyd 
George,  prime  minister  of  England;  Lord  French,  lord  lieutenant  of  Ireland; 
Ian  MacPherson,  late  chief  secretary  for  Ireland,  Acting  Inspector  General 
Smith,  of  the  Royal  Irish  Constabulary;  Divisional  Inspector  Clayton  of  the  Royal 
Irish  Constabulary;  District  Inspector  Swanzy  and  some  unknown  members  of 
the  Royal  Irish  Constabulary." 


13 


Ill— (b). 
DEPORTATIONS— 2,162. 

Major  Erskine  Childers,  D.S.O.,  an  English  veteran  of  the  great  war.  In  a  recent  letter  to  the  London 
Daily  News  gives  this  account  of  the  scene  that  iM-ecedes  the  seizure  and  deportation  of  Irish  i>atriets: 

"Take  a  typical  night  in  Dublin.  As  the  citizens  ^o  to  bed  the  barracks  spring  to  life.  Lorries,  tanks 
and  armored  searchlight  cars  muster  in  fleets,  lists  of  'obTectivea'  are  distributed,  and  when  the  midnight  cur- 
few order  has  emptied  the  streets^— pitch-dark  streets — ^the  strange  cavalcades  issue  forth  to  the  attack.  .  .  . 

"A  thunder  of  knocks;  no  time  to  driaa  (even  for  a  woman  alone)  or  the  door  will  crash  in.  On  open- 
ing, in  charge  the  soldiers — ^literally  charge — with  fixed  bayonets  and  in  full  war-ldt . .  . ." 

The  world  made  a  great  outcry  about  the  deportation  of  Belgian  citizens  by  Germans. 
England's  record  in  Ireland  in  the  past  four  years  is  approximately  2,200  deportations. 

In  one  instance  the  effrontery  shown,  the  injustice  effected,  and  the  colossal  lying  util- 
ized to  condone  the  act  surpasses  any  story  of  international  deportation  in  civilized  history. 
It  could  be  paralleled  only  in  the  cave-period,  and  then  it  would  have  been  free  of  one 
despicable  aspect — the  Ijdng. 

The  men  who  conceived  the  plot  had  not  only  estimated  the  helpless  condition  of  the 
Irish  Nation  at  the  time,  but  coolly  reckoned  upon  a  paucity  of  intelligence  and  a  dulled 
sense  of  international  honor  in  the  world  to  which  they  trtunpeted  their  weird  story. 

On  May  18th  and  19th,  1918,  ninety-one  (91)  Irish  men  and  women  were  seized  in 
their  homes,  placed  on  English  war-ships  and  deported  to  England.  Against  none  of  them 
was  any  real  charge  made.  They  were  all  citizens  of  the  highest  character  and  they  oc- 
cupied the  most  honorable  positions  in  the  gift  of  the  Irish  people — leaders  in  their  new 
national  movement. 

While  still  lying  untried  in  English  prisons  thirty-three  (33)  of  the  deportees  were  elected 
by  sweeping  majorities  to  seats  in  the  National  Parliament  of  Ireland  at  the  General 
Elections  of  December,  1918.  Two  of  them  died  as  a  result  of  prison  treatment.  Eamon 
de  Valera  and  four  others  escaped.  After  ten  months  84  of  them — ^all  who  remained  in 
prison — were  released  without  explanation,  apology  or  any  attempt  at  a  charge  or  trial ! 
Many  of  them  are  to-day — ^it  is, feared  permanently — broken  in  health  as  a  consequence 
of  their  imprisonment. 

FALSE  STORY  OF  GERMAN  INTRIGUE. 

The  story  given  the  world  was  that  some  few  Irish  had  been  discovered  in  communica- 
tion with  Germany,  and  that  the  whole  91  were  arrested  to  prevent  them  doing  likewise. 
The  evidence  upon  which  any  kind  of  an  intrigue  was  supposed  to  be  based  was  an  Irish 
soldier  said  to  have  arrived  off  the  Irish  Coast  in  a  collapsible  boat,  presumably  from  a 
German  submarine. 

Even  after  Lord  Wimbome,  an  honorable  Welshman,  Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland  up 
to  the  time  of  the  intrigue,  had  declared  in  the  House  of  Lords  that  there  was  no  evidence 
of  such  an  intrigue,  even  when  the  supposedly  German  boat  turned  out  to  be  one  made 
by  Ford  for  the  British  admiralty,  and  the  soldier  an  ex-British  constable  and  army*  vet- 
eran, who  hurried  to  the  nearest  police  barracks  as  soon  as  he  landed — even  then  British 
statesmen  asked  the  world  to  believe  their  story.  Were  it  not  for  the  tragedy  of  broken 
lives  and  lost  lives  and  the  long  imprisonment,  the  plot  would  have  been  as  merry  a  farce 
as  Gilbertian  opera. 

The  plain  truth — ^and  one  that  will  damn  in  history  the  reputation  of  every  Britisher 
that  had  to  do  with  it — is  that  the  Sinn  Fein  National  party  was  giving  every  evidence 
of  sweeping  the  country  at  the  approaching  General  Elections.  In  an  effort  to  destroy 
their  campaign,  to  frustrate  the  wUl  of  the  Irish  people,  to  intimidate  them  into  voting 
against  their  jailed  leaders,  every  outstanding  leader  in  the  country  but  three,  three 
successive  election  campaign  directors,  and  every  county  organizer  of  the  party  was  kid- 
napped and  victimized  in  this  farcically  hideous  plot.  The  story  was  cabled  to  America 
with  great  gusto,  for  America  was  then  at  war  with  Germany,  and  the  lying  farce  served 
the  side-purpose  of  stampieding  uninformed  American  opinion  against  the  Irish  Republic 
party! 

This  is  not  a  tale  of  rival  Abysinnian  tribes  or  the  fulfilment  of  a  ukase  by  an  outlawed 
Cossack  hetman.     It  was  deliberately  plotted  by  officials  of  the  British  Government  in 

14 


the  Twentieth  Century,  and  all  who  had  part  in  it  or  connived  at  it  when  done, — and 
they  are  well  known  to  the  Irish  intelligence  agents — ^have  forfeited  their  political  reputa- 
tion in  history. 

DEPORTING  ELECTED  REPRESENTATIVES. 

The  number  of  deportations  of  Irish  citizens  by  British  armed  forces  from  May  1,  1916 
to  March  1,  1920,  was  2,162,  a  number  which  has  increased  by  some  hundreds  within  two 
months. 

In  May,  1918,  Diarmuid  Lynch,  T.D.,  Sinn*  Fein  Food  Director,  was  imprisoned  and 
subsequently  deported  for  taking  steps  to  regulate  exports  and  ensure  a  sufficiency  of 
food  for  the  Irish  people. 

In  1920  before  and  after  the  Municipal  Elections,  Irishmen  elected  or  about  to  be  elected 
were  kidnapped  from  their  beds  at  night  and  hurried  under  military  guards  to  England. 
The  Lord  Mayor  of  Dublin  and  William  Cosgrave,  Chairman  of  the  Civic  Finances,  were 
among  those  deported. 

"Heads  of  himdreds  of  families  have  been  jailed  or  deported,  leaving  dependent 
women  and  children  without  means  of  subsistence  and  rendered  objects  of  public 
charity," 
was  stated  in  the  Report  on  conditions  in  Ireland  with  demand  for  Investigation  by  the 
American  Commission  on  Irish  Independence,  p.  9.     This  statement  was  one  of  those 
categorically  denied  by  Chief  Secretary  MacPherson — one  of  his  official  duties  in  Ireland 
being  to  coerce  or  deny  at  the  convenience  of  the  British  Government.     He  performed 
these  duties  with  a  flexibility  that  suggests  the  ofl&cial  reason  for  his  appointment  to  the 
office  previously  held  by  him — ^an  unnamed  office  which  can  only  be  described  as  the 
Director  of  the  Red  Light  District  behind  the  British  Army  in  France. 


i 


15 


III-(c). 
ARMED  ASSAULTS;  BATON  AND  BAYONET  CHARGES— <309. 

"Our  jails  filled  with  political  prisoners — Innocent  men  are  stabbed  and  shot  to  death.  Bachelors' 
Wsilk  and  Mitchelstown  are  repeated  in  Kerry  and  Clare,  and  we  are  to  fight  for  'freedom'  everywhere  else — 
but  for  the  enduring  rule  here  of  the  bludgeon,  the  bayonet  and  the  bullet.  .  .  ." — Letter  from  President 
de  Valera  to  an  Australian  sympathizer,  February,  1918. 

During  the  war  much  indignation  was  roused  in  America  by  provocatory  displays  of 
German  militarism  in  occupied  Belgium,  and  ruthless  acts  of  soldiery  in  dispelling  little 
groups  or  assemblies  of  Belgians. 

Has  even  a  fraction  of  the  American  people  yet  heard  the  truth  of  nightly  parades  of 
British  military  with  armored  cars,  tanks  or  army  lorries  in  Dublin,  Limerick,  Cork  and 
other  Irish  cities?  How  many  have  heard  of  the  wrecking  of  Fermoy  and  Thurles  and 
the  "shooting  up"  of  Cork  by  British  soldiery?  ^ 

Doctors  must  answer  sick-caUs  even  if  night  and  a  British  Curfew  Law  are  on  the  land. 
They,  like  others,  have  been  fired  at  by  the  apned  police  without  being  first  challenged, 
and  one  was  seriously  wounded. 

This  is  the  treatment  meted  out  to  an  Englishman  who  held  high  office  during  the  war, 
and  who  was  mistaken  for  a  time  in  Dublin  of  the  crime  of  being  an  Irishman: 

"I  walked*  abroad  in  a  dead  and  silent  city  three  hundred  miles  from  London      ^ 
and  saw  law  in  action  of  a  kind  recalling  Warsaw  under  the  Russians.     Si:p- 
posing  the  position  were  reversed?     Supposing  the  Irish  were  running  London 
and  I  was  held  up  in  Kensington  High  Street  for  daring  to  roam  abroad? 

"I  was,  of  course,  held  up — ^by  an  officer  with  a  squad  of  cyclists.  They  ap- 
proached me  warily  in  semi-circular  formation,  and  on  a  pre-arranged  plan. 
They  closed  in  and  at  the  revolver-point  continued  pourparlers.  This  in  a  city 
three  hundred  miles  from  London.     For  daring  to  walk  abroad  in  the  night. 

"It  is  darkest,  they  say,  before  the  dawn.  Here  in  Ireland  to-day  things 
could  not  be  darker.  The  position  here  to-day,  the  forced  government  of  people 
without  the  consent  of  the  governed,  is  the  direct  negation  of  anything  and  every- 
thing the  English  fought  for  at  Ypres  and  on  the  Somme.  I  know.  I  was  a 
Staff  Officer  at  Ypres  under  the  man  who  has  made  Dublin  dark." 
From  letter  of  this  English  visitor  in  "Freeman's  Journal,"  February  25,  1920. 

Had  he  been  proved  to  be  "mere  Irish,"  this  is  how  he  probably  would  have  been  treated: 

"Mr.  Phillip  Maher,  Turtulla,  was  held  up  by  armed  police  on  his  way  home. 
It  was  dark  at  the  time.  He  gave  his  name  when  asked,  and  was  immediately 
struck  by  a  policeman  with  the  butt  of  a  rifle  in  the  jaw.  He  reeled  and  fell, 
and  when  he  rose  he  was  struck  again.     He  was  then  ordered  home.  ..." 

"Three  men  named  Callanan,  Burke  and  McCarthy,  while  proceeding  on 
Saturday  night  to  their  own  homes  in  Lough,  Thurles,  Co.  Tipperary,  were  fired 
at  when  passing  near  the  workhouse.  It  was  about  11.45  p.m.  at  the  time,  and 
they  were  on  foot.     Three  volleys,  they  state,  rang  out,  apparently  from  rifles.  4, 

None  of  the  men  were  struck,  though  the  escapes  were  narrow  enough.  The  men 
assert  they  were  not  halted  or  challenged,  and  did  not  see  any  one.  A  police 
patrol  was  seen  proceeding  out  on  the  road  leading  to  the  workhouse  shortly 
after  11  p.m."  p^.^^^^  ^^^  uj^^^j^  Independent,"  February  21,  1920. 

Or  he  would  have  been  struck  on  his  head  by  the  butt  end  of  a  rifle  and  wounded  as 
Mrs.  Sheehy  Skeffington  was,  when  a  Police  Inspector  arrived  to  prevent  her  holding  an 
open-air  meeting  that  had  not  been  proclaimed.  As  Mrs.  Skeffington  continued  to  speak, 
the  police  rushed  the  platform,  flinging  the  speakers  to  the  ground,  charged  the  crowds 
with  fixed  bayonets,  knocking  senseless  an  old  woman  of  seventy,  and  several  men  and 
boys. 

Or  again,  had  this  British  Staff  Officer  been  guilty  of  the  crime  of  being  an  Irishman, 
this  is  what  he  might  expect: 

April  29,  1919:-;— "When  Matthew  Brady  and  William  McNally  were  returning 
home  from  an  Irish  festival  at  Granard,  Co.  Longford,  they  were  savagely  set 
upon  by  a  police  patrol  who  fired  four  shots  into  the  prostrate  body  of  Brady 

16 


t 


after  he  had  been  felled  by  a  blow.  Brady  is  still  in  hospital,  ten  months  after 
the  event.  No  provocation  was  given  to  the  police,  and  there  has  been  no  public 
enquiry  into  the  outrage." 

(This  news-item  was  suppressed  by  Censor.) 

BRUTAL  ASSAULT  ON  AGED  MAN. 

If  he  were  the  head  of  an  Irish  household,  who  objected  to  an  illegal  notice  being  served 
on  him,  this  might  be  his  fate: 

June  14th,  1919 — "Mr.  Martin  Rice  and  his  father,  Michael  Rice,  a  man 
nearly  60  years  and  the  father  of  eleven  children,  were  shot  by  police  at  Ardatacola, 
Queen's  County.  The  police  came  at  one  o'clock  in  the  morning  to  Rice's  house, 
'protecting'  process  servers  who  brought  (prestmiably)  a  notice  of  ejectment. 
The  father,  refused  to  admit  the  process  servers.  Sergeant  Mattheson  ordered 
Rice  to  take  the  ejectment  order.  'Take  it,'  he  said,  'or  I'll  shoot  you.'  Rice 
refused,  and  in  the  effort  to  prevent  them  coming  into  his  house  he  was  knocked 
down,  beaten  with  the  poUcemen's  batons  and  the  process  servers'  loaded  ash- 
plants.  Martin  Rice,  the  son  of  the  assaulted  man,  declaring  that  he  could  not 
see  his  father  being  murdered,  was  rushing  to  his  father's  aid,  when  his  mother 
called  to  him:  'They'll  shoot  you.'  Martin  turned  round  to  speak  to  his  mother, 
when  he  was  shot  in  the  back  by  the  poUce  and  fell  unconscious  into  her  arms. 
The  old  man  who  at  the  time  was  lying  on  the  groimd  half  tmconscious  from  his 
beating  was  shot  immediately  afterwards.  No  action  has  been  taken  by  the  Gov- 
ernment against  the  poUce  engaged  in  this  dastardly  assault.  The  English  Censor 
refused  to  permit  the  publication  of  the  full  facts  of  the  incident." 

BRITISH  SOLDIERS  CHARGE  WITH  BAYONETS. 

There  were  up  to  March  1,  1920,  609  cases  of  these  armed  assaults  on  unarmed  persons 
by  British  police  and  soldiers  in  Ireland.  Some  of  these  were  but  outstanding  incidents 
in  charges  made  by  the  police  to  break  up  various  assemblages — ^hurling  matches,  agri- 
cultural fairs,  and  GaeUc  language  festivals  of  song  and  dance,  as  well  as  political  meet- 
ings— which  had  been  arranged  and  announced,  then  allowed  to  proceed  until  the  last 
moment,  when  people  begin  to  gather.  Police  or  soldiers  with  bayonets  and  rifles  then 
arrive  and  proclaim  the  assemblage  illegal. 

As  former  Governor  Dunne,  of  Illinois,  wrote  in  his  account  of  Ireland: 

"The  Irish  people  are  proverbially  inteUigent  and  high-spirited,  and  these  out- 
rageous interferences  with  their  social  and  athletic  gatherings  naturally  provoke 
them,  and  at  times  so  irritate  them  that  conflicts  take  place  between  them  and 
the  police,  in  which  most  of  the  time  the  people  suffer  death  or  injury, — and 
which,  in  some  cases  bring  injury  and  even  death  to  the  official  riot-pro vokers.* 

"When  such  injury  or  fatality  occurs  to  a  policeman  it  is  heralded  throughout 
the  world  as  an  instance  of  Irish  terrorism,  but  when  a  Republican  citizen  is  shot 
down  in  cold  blood  by  a  policeman  and  a  coroner's  jury  finds  the  assailant  guilty  of 
murder,  the  murderer  is  neither  indicted  nor  placed  on  trial." 

IRISH  LANGUAGE  PROHIBITED. 

On  June  16, 1919,  the  annual  Language  Movement  Festival  of  Kilmallock  was  proclaimed. 
Police  and  military  fully  armed  and  accompanied  by  machine  guns  and  armored  cars  in- 
vaded the  town  and  occupied  the  main  streets.  The  meeting  was  not  field,  but  a  crowd 
which  gathered  in  the  streets  that  evening  was  savagely  set  upon  by  the  police,  who  maimed 
and  wounded  several.  Among  those  injured  were  many  women  and  children.  One 
woman  complained  to  a  constable  about  the  injuries  inflicted  by  the  police  upon  her  brother, 
who  had  served  four  years  against  the  Germans,  and  was  herself  batoned  for  remonstrating 
with  hjm. 

An  American  Army  Chaplain  who  was  a  witness  of  this  incident  said  he  had  not  be- 
lieved it  possible  so  unjustifiable  an  attack  could  be  made  upon  peaceful  citizens  by  Brit- 
ish soldiery. 

•Word  recently  received  in  America  states  that: 

American  Veteran  of  War  Wounded:  Late  in  April,  1820,  country  people  of  Clare  lit  a  bonfire  the  night 
prisoners  in  Mountjoy  Jail  were  released,  rejoicing  over  the  return  of  their  friends  as  soon  as  they  were  strong 
enough  to  travel.  The  police  charged  on  the  happy  group  about  the  bonfire,  killing  three  and  wounding 
several  others,  one  of  the  last  an  American  veteran  visiting  his  old  home. 

17 


■■•-'-" -°" TT^T  T- 


AEROPLANES  RAID  QUIET  GLEN. 

On  the  same  day  3,000  soldiers  and  police  invaded  South  Tipperary  with  machine  guns, 
armored  cars  and  aeroplanes.  In  the  Glen  of  Aherlo  around  two  o'clock  in  the  morning 
every  house  was  entered  and  searched.  In  some  cases  the  occupants  were  stripped  naked 
and  turned  out  of  their  beds.  While  the  aeroplanes  manoeuvred  overhead,  armored  cars 
and  motor  lorries  went  up  into  the  Tipperary  hills  and  brought  down  the  men  who  were 
minding  the  cattle  there  and  searched  them.  There  were  many  humiliating  and  uncalled 
for  incidents  in  this  night-long  raid,  and  the  Censor  felt  compelled  to  suppress  the  full 
facts. 

A  few  days  earlier  Dundalk,  a  town  in  the  North  of  Ireland,  was  occupied  by  a  large 
military  force.  Barricades  were  built  in  the  street,  numerous  houses  raided,  all  traffic 
challenged  and  Matthew  Murphy,  a  commercial  traveller  driving  into  the  town,  was 
fired  upon  by  the  soldiers  and  shot  without  warning. 

ASSAULT  ABOUT  WHICH  MacPHERSON  LIED: 

On  June  6,  1919,  a  Dublin  concert  was  "proclaimed"  by  British  officialdom  in  Ireland. 
Sufficient  warning  was  not  given  and  many  people  gathered  thinking  the  concert  was 
going  to  be  held.  These  a  strong  force  of  police  dispersed  with  most  violent  methods. 
They  fired  on  the  crowd  wounding  two  men,  and  a  police  sergeant  shot  a  girl  of  twenty 
in  the  thigh.     Some  of  the  crowd  retaliated  and  four  policemen  were  wounded. 

W.  J.  McCann,  formerly  Inspector  of  United  States  Mihtary  Police  in  the  Philippines, 
was  an  eyewitness  of  this  assault  and  stated  in  a  press  interview,  which  the  British  Censor 
suppressed : 

"The  action  of  the  police  in  firing  upon  the  crowd  was  unjustifiable." 

The  British  Chief  Secretary  MacPherson  refers  to  this  in  his  supposed  reply  to  the 
Report  made  by  the  American  Commission,     The  Americans  reported: 

"(47)  With  a  ferocity  tmparalleled  even  in  this  history  of  modern  warfare,  within 
the  past  few  days  men  and  women  have  been  shot  down  in  the  streets  of  Dublin." 

To  which  MacPherson  replied: 

"Unfortunately,  four  policemen  and  a  girl  have  been  shot  in  the  streets  of  Dublin 
within  the  past  few  days  by  a  number  of  Sinn  Feiners,  who  rescued  a  Sinn  Fein 
prisoner  from  the  police.    The  police  fired  no  shots." 

Not  only  were  the  police  barracks  which  dot  Ireland  turned  into  sand-bagged  arid  forti- 
fied forts  during  "the  last  couple  of  years,  but  the  British  officers  of  "law  and  order"  in 
Ireland  took  courses  in  bombing  and  bayonet  practice  from  military  instructors.  They 
made  frequent  occasions  to  use  the  last  upon  the  Irish  people;  for  charging  upon  crowds 
with  fixed  bayonets  has  become  a  common  form  of  military  intimidation  in  Ireland. 

"Men,  women  and  even  children  are  beaten  down  in  the  public  streets  by  an 
armed  military  police  force  organized  not  for  the  preservation  of  internal  peace 
but  for  the  forcible  sustainment  of  the  English  usurpation.  Some  are  even  killed 
in  these  unlicensed  attacks  upon  the  general  body  of  the  people." 

(Two  Years  of  English  Atrocities  in  Ireland,  p.  4.) 

'ENGLISH  EDITOR  SHAMED. 

Austin  Harrison,  Editor  of  the  "English  Review,"  and  an  Englishman,  in  his  magazine 
for  September  1917  describes  a  night  he  spent  in  Dublin  shortly  before.  He  saw  a  crowd 
of  young  people  gather  near  the  station  to  welcome  Cosgrave,  just  elected  to  parliament 
for  Kilkenny.     Cosgrave  did  not  arrive,  and  the  crowd,  writes  Harrison — 

"...  sing  songs  and  grradually  dwindle;  then  later  there  is  a  baton  charge.  For  no  special  reason. 
A  young  man  Ties  on  the  pavement,  senseless  .  .  .  knocked  out  ....  The  Cossack  method.  Again  I  won- 
der whether  the  emotional  Welsh  Prime  Minister  knows  of  our  i>olice  government  in  Ireland.  1  have  seen 
Cossacks  do  that  in  Petrograd.  I  am  puzzled.  There  was  no  riot.  There  was  no  reason  for  any  violence 
...  To  knock  a  man  out  and  leave  him  lie  like  a  dog  in  the  street  seems  a  queer  way  in  the  Empire  of  Lib- 
erty.    I  never  saw  the  Berlin  police  do  that.    I  go  to  bed  that  night  ashamed." 

In  the  past  few  years  of  terrorism  baton  and  bayonet  charges  have  actually  been  made 
in  public  halls  where  there  is  no  way  of  escape  for  the  people  attacked.  It  was  in  this  way 
Thomas  Russell,  the  young  Kerry  teacher,  was  killed.  On  April  9, 1918,  the  police  batoned 
the  people  of  Dtmgarvan  in  the  local  courthouse,  where  they  were  attending  the  trial  of  a 
political  prisoner. 

18 


ENGLISH  LABOUR  DELEGATION  SHOCKED. 

"Speaking  of  the  condition  of  Thurles,  Co.  Tipperary,  after  the  English  armed 
forces  had  sacked  a  portion  of  the  town,  Messrs.  Arthur  Henderson,  M.P.,  ex- 
Cabinet  Minister  and  Wm.  Adamson,  M.  P.,  Chairman  of  the  EngUsh  Labour 
Party,  said  to  our  reporter  that  what  they  had  seen  reminded  them  of  a  section  of 
Argonne  in  the  war  zone  when  they  were  on  a  visit  to  the  front  in  France." 

Dublin  Evening  Telegraph,  January  22,  1920. 

"On  January  21,  1920,  the  police  and  military  in  Thurles  took  possession  of 
the  streets  at  11:15  p.  m.  and  fired  with  rifles  and  hand  grenades  on  the  houses  of 
the  citizens  for  nearly  an  hour  and  a  half.  They  wrecked  twelve  houses  in  the 
main  street  alone,  and  prominent  citizens  made  public  statements  of  their  cer- 
tainty that  the  police  fired  their  rifles  with  murderous  intent  for  they  fired  delib- 
erately into  the  houses  of  sixteen  families,  causing  much  destruction,  though 
no  one  was  killed."  j^-^j^  Bulletin,  January  22,  1920. 

Toward  the  end  of  last  year  English  soldiers  in  barracks  near  Fermoy  twice  wrecked 
and  looted  the  principal  shops  of  the  town. 

Among  the  five  Munster  towns  victimized  in  this  way  was  Cork,  where  the  military 
display  at  night  included  armored  cars  as  well  as  the  usual  lorries. 

"I  am  informed  that  the  rioting  was  caused  by  the  troops  who  acted  in  a  wild 
reckless  and  disgraceful  manner."  This  was  the  statement  of  the  Lord  Mayor  of 
Cork  in  reference  to  the  action  of  the  soldiers  belonging  to  the  Shropshire  Regi- 
ment, who  wrecked  a  section  of  that  City  on  the  night  of  November  10,  1919. 
The  soldiers  smashed  shop  windows  and  looted  the  shops. 

When  the  citizens  endeavored  to  stop  the  looting  they  were  charged  and  dis- 
persed by  the  police  who  used  the  butt  ends  of  their  rifles  on  the  people.  This 
is  the  same  regiment  which  was  removed  from  Fermoy  for  wrecking  the  town. 
The  Corporation  of  Cork  demanded  the  removal  of  the  Shropshire  Regiment 
from  that  city.  There  was  however,  neither  a  public  enquiry  nor  punishments 
of  the  offending  military  by  their  oflEicers. 

Irish  Bulletin. 

FIRED  145  ROUNDS  ON  PEOPLE. 

At  Limerick,  in  one  of  their  more  recent  displays  of  night  frightfulness,  the  indiscrimi- 
nate firing  of  the  "patrol"  (as  these  night  rajders  call  themselves)  caused  the  death  of 
Richard  O'Dwyer,  an  esteemed  merchant,  who  was  sitting  in  his  own  closed  shop  and 
of  Lena  Johnston,  a  young  woman  returning  from  her  work  at  a  theatre.  Two  other 
citizens,  equally  inoffensive,  were  seriously  wounded.  In  this  case  an  inquest  was  held. 
The  military  and  police  admitted  that  they  had  fired  145  rounds  of  rifle  and  revolver 
ammunition  at  the  people.  They  claimed  that  they  had  also  been  fired  upon,  but  reliable 
citizens  held  that  their  story  of  an  attack  on  themselves  was  deliberately  manufactured. 
One  soldier  admitted  he  had  lost  control  of  himself,  thought  he  was  on  the  battlefield 
and  ran  through  the  streets  shouting:   "Come  on,  the  Welsh!" 

This  is  a  tragic  picture  of  armed  forces  running  amuck  in  a  quiet  city,  firing  in  a  reckless, 
cowardly  manner.  Nor  was  it  in  Belgium.  When  they  had  fatally  shot  two  citizens  and 
wounded  two  others  they  marched  back  to  barracks,  with  noisy  cheers  singing — ^not  "Die 
Wacht  am  Rhine." 

It  was  "Rule  Brittania"  they  sang: 

"*  *  *  The  nations  not  so  blegsed  as  thee. 
Shall  in  their  turn  to  tyrants  fall.  .  .  . 
—  Rule,  Britannia,  rule  the  waves  *  *  *  ," 

This  she  does  by  holding  Ireland,  Gibraltar,  Malta,  the  Suez  Canal,  India  and  a  few 
other  comers  of  the  world  recently  acquired  against  the  will  of  their  rightful  owners. 
Meanwhile  there  is  a  newer  Imperial  cbant,  that  of  Elgar  and  Benson  sung  with  great 
gusto  in  the  opening  years  of  the  war.  In  view  of  Britain's  diplomatic  shuffling  of  war- 
spoils,  by  which  she  gained  control  of  over  2,500,000  additional  square  miles  of  territory, 
and  to-day  rules  over  one-third  of  the  world;  it  is  felt  to  be  indiscreet  to  shout  the  motif 
of  the  chant  in  the  ears  of  the  world  just  now — ^for  it  sounds  very  much  like  the  wartime 
newspapers'  translation  of  "Deutschland  Uber  Alles:" 

"Thou,  who  hast  made  her  (England)  mighty, 
Make  her  mightier  yet." 

19 


Ill-(d). 

RAIDS:  19,423.* 

"Raids  on  private  dwellings  are  a  common  occurrence.  To  be  found  in  pos- 
session of  political  leaflets  means  immediate  arrest.  A  gathering  of  three  or  more 
persons  is  an  illegal  assembly.  Fairs  and  markets,  which  are  an  essential  part 
of  the  machinery  of  Irish  trade,  are  prohibited;  trade-union  meetings,  even  na- 
tional games  and  pastimes,  are  forbidden;  musical  festivals  and  literary  and 
debating  societies  of  the  most  harmless   character  are  regarded  as  conspiracies." 

From  Report  of  British  Parliamentary  Labour  Party. 
The  night-raids  made  at  times  upon  individual  Irish  homes,  but  usually  upon  a  large 
number  of  houses  in  one  zone  or  another,  are  specially  intended  to  strike  the  terror  of  ' 

British  might  into  the  hearts  of  the  people. 

The  military  raid  made  in  the  Glen  of  Aherlo,  with  motor  lorries,  machine  guns,  and 
aeroplanes  referred  to  earlier  is  the  custom  rather  than  the  exception  in  Ireland,  as  is 
obvious  from  the  total  number  of  raids  up  to  March  1 — 19,423 — admitted  by  the  military,  I 

and  reported  in  the  Press. 

These  raids,  like  the  "patrols"  that  degenerate  into  bands  for  assault,  are  largely  parades 
of  military  force  to  induce  provocation  and  intimidation.  The  London  Daily  News  of 
March  10,  1920,  reporting  Irish  conditions  indicates  that  there  are  innumerable  "personal 
raids,"  if  they  may  be  so  termed,  of  which  no  figures  are  kept: 

"Armored  cars,  motor  lorries  and  bodies  of  cyclists  nightly  accost  civilians 
and  it  is  no  uncommon  thing  ^or  a  man  to  be  held  up  three  or  four  times  within 
a  few  hvmdred  yards.     Revolvers  are  thrust  into  their  faces;    they  are  told  to 
hold  up  their  hands  above  their  heads,  and  even  if  they  have  permits  are  often 
questioned  at  length  about  their  business  and  their  pockets  searched." 
On  November  6,  1919,  in  the  English  House  of  Commons,  Mr.  McLean  asked  how  many 
raids  had  been  made  by  police  and  military  upon  private  houses  in  Ireland  during  the  last 
twelve  months.     The  Attorney  General  said  the  Chief  Secretary  had  endeavored  to  get 
the  information,  but  found  it  would  impose  such  an  amount  of  work  on  the  police  that 
he  could  not  ask  them  to  undertake  the  detailed  investigations  that  would  be  necessary. 
(Hansard,  Col.  641.) 

These  figures  are  readily  available  in  Dublin  Castle  records,  but  the  information  would 
not  be  edifying,  so  was  withheld.  During  the  first  nine  months  of  1919,  there  were  5,588 
of  these  raids,  nominally  to  discover  arms  or  "seditious"  literature  or  Irish  patriots.  In 
two  "military  drives,"  alone,  unreported  in  the  press,  over  4,000  Tipperary  homes  were 
searched,  their  residents  were  not  only  searched,  but  numbers  of  them  stripped  naked  by 
the  brutal  soldiery. 

AMERICAN  ARMY  OFFICER  DISGUSTED. 

A  typical  raid — one  in  which  700  men  of  England's  forces  were  engaged — was  described 
by  Capt.  Thomas  Kissane,  a  young  American  Army  Officer  on  his  return  from  France. 
The  story,  reproduced  in  the  London  Daily  Herald,  October  18,  1919,  tells  us: 

After  serving  in  France,  Captain  Kissane  had  leave  of  absence  to  visit  his  old  | 

home  in  County  Clare.     British  officers  there,  he  said,  boasted  that  Great  Brit-  %; 

ain  has  a  right  to  interfere  anywhere  on  earth,  provided  it  has  the  strength  to  sub- 
stantiate that  interference. 

He  saw  soldiers  everywhere  in  full  panoply  of  war,  and  backed  by  light  artillery, 
armoured  cars  and  whippet  tanks. 

"When  you  want  to  go  from  one  village  to  another,  you  must  have  a  pass  from 
a  British  officer,"  said  Captain  Kissane.  "In  County  Clare,  business  is  dead, 
because  the  people  are  not  allowed  to  congregate  or  buy  or  sell  goods. 

"Arrests  are  wholesale.  For  absolutely  no  reason,  several  young  fellows  were 
arrested  in  my  own  village  and  sent  to  prison  without  trial. 

"My  brother  and  another  young  fellow  were  arrested  for  soliciting  in  their 
native  village  subscriptions  to  buy  a  set  of  band  instruments.  My  brother  had 
received  no  money,  so  he  went  free,  but  the  other  man  went  to  prison  for  eight 
months. 


•  This  total  of  19,423  raids  does  not  include  any  since  March  1, 1920.  In  March  and  April  the  list  of 
raids  was  increased  by  more  than  3,000.  In  one  week  of  April,  ending  April  4,  there  were  1,113  raids.  On 
one  day  alone.  April  3,  613  raids  were  made.     On  April  30  over  500  houses  were  raided  in  various  counties. 

20 


i 


GIRLS  mSULTED. 

"My  sister,  who  is  examiner  in  French  for  the  Board  of  Education  for  Ireland, 
was  staying  at  a  girl  friend's  house  in  Cork,  with  seven  other  girl  teachers. 

"On  the  night  of  last  August  14th,  400  British  troops  and  300  constabulary  or- 
dered them  out  of  the  house  in  light  attire  and  then  plunged  their  bayonets  into 
the  bedclothes,  tore  down  curtains,  smashed  the  chinaware,  threw  the  girls'  per- 
sonal effects  out  of  the  window,  and  left  the  house  a  wreck. 

"Meanwhile  on  the  roadside  troops  surrounded  the  girls  and  hurled  at  them 
every  conceivable  abuse  and  insult." 

OLD  LADY  ABUSED. 

Age  is  not  respected  by  Ireland's  army  of  occupation  any  more  than  modesty. 

The  house  in  Courtown  Harbour  of  Mrs.  Etchingham,  mother  of  Sean  Etdiingham, 
member  of  the  Irish  Parliament  for  East  Wicklow,  was  raided  by  the  Gorey  police  under 
District-Inspector  I^e  Wilson.  Both  the  District-Inspector  and  the  Sergeant  were  in- 
toxicated. The  hour  was  between  two  and  three  in  the  morning.  The  police  invaded 
Mrs.  Etchingham's  bedroom  and  forced  her  at  the  points  of  their  revolvers  to  leave  her 
bed  which  they  then  tossed  up  and  thoroughly  searched. 

Mrs.  Etchingham  is  over  80  years  of  age;  her  house  has  been  raided  many  times  by 
the  police  under  the  same  officer.  Nothing  found  in  it  has  ever  been  of  sufficient  im- 
portance to  cause  a  single  arrest.  Mrs.  Etchingham  has  almost  invariably  fainted  in  the 
course  of  previous  raids — a  fact  well  known  to  the  police.  She  and  her  daughter  and  two 
grandsons,  aged  about  15  and  17,  were  the  only  people  in  the  house,  at  the  last  raid.  When 
the  elder  boy  asked  the  police  not  to  molest  his  grandmother,  he  was  threatened  with 
arrest  and  forced  to  leave  the  room. 

EVEN  PRO-ENGLISH  ROUSED. 

Recently  Mr.  Farrell,  a  former  Lord  Mayor  of  Dublin,  wrote  to  the  public  press  that 
Ireland  is  being  governed  either  by  a  madman  or  a  fool  to-day.  As  a  proof  that  he  is  a 
friend  of  England  he  recalls  the  fact  he  was  the  principal  guest  at  a  state  dinner  given  by 
the  King  of  England  in  1911,  and  that  subsequently  he  had  a  long  private  audience  with 
His  Majesty.  Yet  on  the  morning  of  February  10th  between  4  and  5  o'clock,  he  was 
aroused  from  his  bed  by  English  soldiers  in  full  war  equipment,  who  forced  their  way  into 
his  manor  house  at  the  point  of  the  revolver  and  ransacked  the  house  from  cellar  to  at- 
tic. He  adds:  "I  was  kept  between  two  soldiers  with  fixed  bayonets,  and  an  officer  carried 
a  revolver  all  the  time  when  visiting  the  rooms  where  my  children  and  the  maids  were." 
The  troops  left  empty  handed. 

Mr.  O'Farrell  is  even  given  to  harboring  "seditious"  literature. 

LORD  MAYOR  AND  BRITISH  OFFICER. 

The  residence  of  the  Lord  Mayor  of  Dublin — ^the  historic  Mansion  House — has  been 
searched  upon  more  than  one  occasion — even  the  apartments  belonging  to  his  wife.  A 
British  officer,  resident  in  Dublin  and  decorated  in  the  late  war  for  distinguished  service, 
was  also  subjected  to  a  raid  recently — the  raiders  arriving  in  a  tank — a  preposterous  con- 
veyance frequently  used,  for  intimidation  likely.  This  officer.  Major  Childers,  asked  for 
and  received  an  apology  from  the  Commanding  Officer  for  the  hardened  insolence  of  his 
raiders  to  his  own  person,  and  the  dangerous  possibilities  of  their  bayonets-flashing  and 
rifle-parading  before  a  sensitive  child  roused  in  the  middle  of  the  night  for  purposes  of  their 
search. 

SINISTER  REASON  FOR  BANK  RAIDS. 

The  Sinn  Feig  Co-operative  People's  Bank,  opened  ten  years  ago  in  Ireland,  was  twice 
ordered  closed  and  finally  seized.  On  the  last  occasion  all  books  and  papers  and  over 
J40,000  were  seized  by  the  military  and  the  house  closed  to  business. 

"The  bank  was  established  ten  years  ago  by  a  limited  company  to  carry  on  the 
banking  business — to  assist  in  the  development  of  Irish  industries  and  for  the 
promotion  of  popular  credit.  It  is  described  as  the  'Sinn  Fein'  Co-operative 
People's  Bank,  and  it  is  governed  by  a  Committee  of  Management  elected  annually 
from  its  members.  A  Council  of  Supervision  is  similarly  elected.  Apart  from 
the  fact  that  a  number  of  Sinn  Feiners,  in  addition  to  people  of  other  shades  of 
political  opinion,  deposit  savings  there  and  the  majority  of  the  shareholders  are 
Sinn  Feiners,  the  bank  has  no  connection  with  Sinn  Fein." — Irish  Bulletin, 
February,  1920. 

21 


The  real  offence  of  this  Bank  and  The  New  Ireland  Assurance  Society,  which  was 
also  seized  and  ordered  closed,  is  that  their  policy  is  directed  to  the  upbuilding  of  Irish 
credit  and  of  Irish  interests  first. 

The  Assurance  Society  was  founded  with  the  avowed  object  of  stopping  the  flow 
of  Irish  money  abroad  to  England  or  elsewhere  for  insurance,  and  to  create  a  truly  Irish 
insurance  company.  Since  its  inception  in  1916  it  had  made  remarkable  progress  and 
was  firmly  establi^ed  throughout  the  country  at  the  time  of  the  seizure. 

DELIBERATE  KIDNAPPING  OF  ELECTED  COUNCILLORS. 

In  1918  the  Irish  people  retiuTied  over  two-thirds  of  the  members  for  an  Irish  Republic. 
As  a  punishment  for  this  expression  of  self-determination  on  their  part  militant  terrorism 
increased  and  most  of  the  members  who  were  not  kidnapped  before  the  Elections  were 
arrested  afterward. 

Similarly,  after  the  municipal  and  urban  elections  of  January,  1920,  raids  grew  in  num- 
ber and  ferocity.  In  one  week  in  February  there  were  over  1100  of  these  raids  in  Ireland. 
In  one  night  90  men  were  seized,  many  of  them  prominent  men  among  the  newly  elected 
officials  and  members  of  the  Irish  Congress.  In  one  of  these  raids  the  police  seized  Mr. 
Cosgrave,  who  has  been  for  years  in  charge  of  the  finances  of  the  Dublin  Corporation 
and  was  this  year  re-elected  on  the  Republican  ticket.  The  Lord  Mayor  of  Dublin,  seized 
and  deported  before  his  election,  was  imprisoned,  without  trial,  in  Ixindon,  and  finally 
released  in  broken  health. 

In  another  more  recent  raid  200  more  Irishmen  were  seized  by  a  large  party  of  soldiers 
who  entered  their  homes  with  fixed  bayonets,  making  their  rounds  in  armored  cars  and  tanks. 
In  many  cases  they  battered  in  the  doors  with  rifles,  herded  the  women  and  children  into 
rooms  together  and  there  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet  threatened  to  kill  them  if  they  would 
not  tell  where  their  menfolk  were.  (Leading  men  in  the  Irish  movement  do  not  always  live 
at  home  now,  because  of  these  raids.) 

The  men  seized  in  this  raid  were  carried  off  to  a  British  warship  in  the  harbor  and  taken 
to  England,  with  an  aeroplane  manoeuvring  over  the  ship  droning  into  them  as  it  went,  its 
story  of  England  grown  "mightier  yet,"  and  of  her  plans  to  secure  the  mastery  of  the 
air  as  of  the  sea  and  the  world's  oil-fields. 

RAID  ON  OLD  HOME  OF  PROMINENT  AMERICAN  CITIZENS. 

A  letter  from  the  aged  mother  of  Bishop  Cantwell  of  Los  Angeles,  to  her  son  and  his 
three  brothers  who  are  like  himself  prominent  citizens  of  California,  tells  its  own  story  of 
a  recent  raid  in  Fethard,  Tipperary.  When  the  letter  was  received  the  news  it  contained 
was  sent  by  wireless  to  the  Bishop  in  midocean  on  his  way  to  Europe. 

The  letter  is  eloquent  in  its  motherly  appeal  and  the  writer's  approval  of  her  boy's 
patriotic  stafid. 

"Prison  nor  death  itself  can  crush  the  spirit  of  Walter  and  the  brave  men  of 
Ireland.    They  have  established  the  Irish  Republic  ..." 
It  is  of  just  such  aged  Irish  mothers,  too  often  left  desolate,  who  have  given  of  their 
best — the  fruit  of  their  womb — to  America;  it  is  of  these  the  Englishman  Begbie  wrote — 
"...  But  something  of  their  hearts  and  their  souls  are  woven  indestructibly 
into  the  destinies  of  America." 

"My  dear  James,"  writes  the  mother — 

"My  boy  Walter  was  arrested  yesterday  morning  at  4.30  o'clock.  As  we  slept  the 
the  door  of  oiu-  home  was  battered  in  and  the  military  and  police  overran  the 
house,  destroying  everything  before  them.  They  asked  for  Walter.  They 
dragged  him  from  his  bed.    They  offered  no  warrant  or  explanation. 

"Your  dear  brother  was  taken  away  from  me,  under  a  heavy  guard,  with 
fixed  bayonets.  They  took  him  to  Cork  on  an  English  gunboat.  He  is  "now  in 
Belfast  prison,  without  any  charge  lodged  against  him.  You  well  know  that 
Walter  is  guilty  of  no  crime,  imless  it  be  a  crime  to  love  Ireland,  his  country. 

"Cannot  you  men  in  America  put  a  stop  to  this  terrible  treatment  of  our 
boys  in  Ireland?  Prison  nor  death  itself  can  crush  the  spirit  of  Walter  and  the 
brave  men  of  Ireland.  They  have  estabUshed  the  Irish  Republic  and  they  will 
accept  nothing  from  England  but  that  she  get  out  of  their  country. 

"After  Walter's  arrest  the  military  returned  to  the  house  and  ransacked  every 
room,  doing  much  damage.  They  seized  and  read  my  letters  from  you,  John, 
Arthtu-  and  William.  I  was  ill  when  they  came  before  dawn.  It  was  very  cold. 
They  refused  to  let  us  light  the  fire.  The  military  surrounded  the  house  for  hours 
while  others  ransacked  each  room.  They  got  nothing  that  could  connect  Walter 
with  any  crime  other  than  loyalty  to  Ireland. 

"Please  pray  and  work  for  the  safe  return  of  my  boy  Walter.  ..." 

22 


i 


III.-(e). 

ARRESTS:  6,157. 
IMPRISONMENT  AND  HUNGER  STRIKES. 

"I  could  bomb  a  crowd  from  an  aeroplane  with  a  better  conscience  than  engage 
in  this  cold  blooded  systematic  condemnation  of  respectable  peoples  to  the  rigors 
and  ignominies  of  Jail  life — to  loss  of  health,  loss  of  business  and  career,  too  often 
to  loss  of  life;  not  for  breaking  the  moral  law,  but  in  very  truth  for  obeying  that 
universal  law  which  impels  all  men  worthy  of  the  name  of  men  to  become  free." — 
Major  Erskine  Childers,  D.S.C,  R.N.P.C,  in  London  Daily  Herald,  May  26,  1919. 

Since  May  1,  1916  there  have  been  over  6,157  arrests  in  Ireland  of  political  prisoners. 
Their  "crime"  was  variously  expressed  by  them,  but  it  was  always  one — demanding  Ire- 
land's inalienable  right  to  govern  itself.  It  was  the  crime  of  Washington  and  Franklin 
in  '76,  the  crime  that  brought  Colonel  Ethan  Allen  in  irons  from  Quebec  to  England  in 
1775. 

In  one  contemporary  work — "Two  Years  of  English  Atrocities  in  Ireland" — there  are 
53  pages  of  closely  printed  records  setting  out  briefly  such  violations  of  Irish  personal 
liberty  and  property,  as  have  been  admitted  by  the  English  Censor.  Those  not  so  ad- 
mitted, though  known  to  the  Irish  people,  are  not  included  in  the  totals  given  in  this  com- 
pilation either. 

Bald  statements  of  the  vast  number  of  arrests  can  convey  nothing  of  the  hardships 
these  entailed,  but  some  idea  is  had  from  these  paragraphs  in  the  American  Commis- 
sion's "Report  on  Conditions  in  Ireland" — statements  which  are  borne  out  by  documents 
submitted  to  the  compiler  of  this  pamphlet: 

"(2)  Hundreds  of  men  and  women  have  been  confined  for  months  in  the  vilest 
prisons  without  any  charge  being  preferred  against  them. 

"(3)  At  least  five  men  have  died  as  the  result  of  atrocities  perpetrated  upon 
them  while  in  prison.   ♦  *  * 

"(4)  Prisoners  are  confined  in  narrow  cells  with  hands  handcuflFed  behind 
them  day  and  night.  In  this  condition  they  are  fed  by  jail  attendants.  They  are 
permitted  no  opportunity  of  answering  the  calls  of  nature,  and  are  compelled  to 
lie  in  their  clothing,  befouled  by  human  excrement  for  days  at  a  time.    • 

"(5)  Persons  are  confined  in  cells  which  are  not  big  enough  for  one  man. 
They  are  not  provided  with  beds  or  bunks,  but  are  compelled  to  sleep  upon  the 
bare  floors.  There  are  no  toilet  facilities  or  receptacles  to  contain  hvunan  oflEal, 
which  necessarily  accumulated  upon  the  floors  where  men  are  compelled  to  sleep 
in  the  filth  night  after  night.   *  *  * 

"(10)  Solitary  confinement  in  most  horrible  form  is  generally  practised. 
Numbers  of  prisoners  have  been  taken  directly  from  jails  to  insane  asylums,  ren- 
dered maniacs  by  their  treatment." 

WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN  SEIZED  BY  POLICE. 
In  making  these  arrests  the  British  police  usually  seize  the  political  prisoners  in  their 
beds  at  night.  The  arrests  include  men  and  women.  Thej''  even  include  children,  for 
last  year  the  police  kidnapped  a  child  of  eleven  (young  Connors  of  Tipperary)  and  for 
close  to  two  months  even  his  parents  were  not  permitted  to  know  why  he  had  been  seized 
or  where  he  was  held.  Following  that,  a  boy  of  thirteen  was  seized  and  also  held  hidden 
for  weeks  without  any  word  to  his  parents.  Men  over  seventy — ^including  Laurence 
Ginnell,  for  years  a  member  of  Parliament  at  Westminster  and  a  scholarly  barrister, — 
have  been  held  for  months  without  trial,  and  submitted  to  exceptionally  harsh  treatment. 
A  sister  of  Grace  Gifford,  the  gifted  young  artist  of  whom  Orpen  painted  a  striking 
portrait  symbolic  of  "The  New  Ireland,"  was  held  in  solitary  confinement  for  weeks. 
Seventeen  (17)  women  and  girls,  including  Louise  Gavan  Duffy,  daughter  of  Mitchel's 
comrade  who  later  was  elected  Premier  of  Australia,  Mrs.  Sheehy-SkeffingtMi,  Miss  French- 
Mullen,  were  arrested — most  of  them  for  speaking  Irish  or  collecting  for  memorials  to 
Irish  patriots.  Saeve  Trench,  granddaughter  of  the  great  Protestant  Primate,  Arch- 
bishop Trench,  was  in  jail  also  for  months  in  1916. 

PAT  McCABE,  of  Clones,  was  imprisoned  for  one  month  for  "whistling  derisively  at  the 
police,"  American  artists  idealized  brave  Belgian  youngsters  for  this  same  act  of  irreve- 
rence to  Germany's  Army  of  Occupation. 

23 


THOMAS  O'REILLY,  who  is  a  director  of  the  Cavan  and  Leitrim  railway,  with  two 
companions,  was  imprisoned  for  one  month  for  singing  the  "Soldiers'  Song."  Girls  have 
been  sentenced  to  prison  for  singing  national  songs:  one  man  was  sentenced  to  two  years 
with  hard  labour  for  the  same  "crime." 

MARY  McMANTTS,  of  Athlone,  was  arrested  and  heavily  fined  for  selling  a  song  pub- 
lished in  Ireland  several  years  before  the  war. 

JOHN  DORAN  sinned  against  England  by  leading  a  procession  of  pipers  without  first 
obtaining  the  gracious  permit  of  the  British  police.  He  was  arrested  and  fined  $25.  So 
the  crowded  record  of  53  pages  run  ("Two  years  of  English  Atrocities  in  Ireland.")  Men 
who  were  suspected  of  being  Irish  Volunteers  received  sentences  of  one,  two  and  five  years 
of  hard  labour. 

DENY  JURISDICTION  OF  ENGLISH  COURTS  OVER  THEM. 

In  the  majority  of  cases  the  term  of  imprisonment  is  doubled  or  greatly  increased  by  the 
refusal  of  the  prisoners — as  soldiers  and  citizens  of  the  Irish  Republic — to  acknowledge 
that  the  British  court  in  which  they  were  tried  had  any  jurisdiction  over  them. 

Even  in  small  details  the  action  of  the  Irish  political  prisoners  challenges  admiration, 
for  their  endurance,  their  consistency  and  determined  stand  as  citizens  of  the  Irish  Republic. 
Seized  usually  without  charge,  going  to  an  unknown  destination  in  England  or  Ireland, 
facing  the  possibility  of  a  death  from  harshness  like  Ashe,  or  one  from  criminal  neglect 
like  McCan,  Ireland's  more  than  6,000  political  prisoners  since  1916  have  endured  many 
times  what  American  patriots  did  in  Britain's  ghastly  prison-ships.  They  will  continue  to 
endure  until  Ireland  is  free. 

Chief  Secretary  MacPherson  denied  categorically  the  statements  of  the  American  Com- 
mission about  the  ill-treatment  of  Irish  prisoners.  An  American  paper,  controlled  at  the 
time  by  Rodman  Wanamaker,  was  at  pains  to  bolster  up  in  lengthy  articles  MacPherson's 
denial — but  the  London  Times  admitted  his  statements  were  halting  and  evasive.  More 
liberal  English  papers— the  News,  the  Guardian,  the  Daily  Herald — conceded  his  state- 
ments contained  shameful  admissions  of  British  misgovemment  in  Ireland. 

But  there  is  no  need  of  other  evidence  to  show  the  true  condition  of  the  jails  than  the 
following  statement  by  a  policeman  of  what  he  regarded  as  quite  ordinary  and  humane 
treatment. 

REVELATION  OF  PRISON  HARDSHIPS. 
The  Belfast  Daily  Telegraph  of  May  28, 1917,  reports  the  trial  of  a  schoolteacher,  James 
Joseph  Layng.     He  had  been  courtmartialed  at  Dundalk  for  possessing  a  revolver,  and 
MacManus  in  his  "Ireland's  Case"  quotes  the  following  from  the  cross-examination  of 
Police-Sergeant  Graham: 

"Attorney — ^You  brought  the  prisoner  to  the  barracks  at  Castle  Bellingham 
and  put  him  in  the  lock-up  there? 
"Sergeant — Yes. 

"Attorney — Am  I  right  in  saying  that  that  room  is  nine  feet  by  three  feet  six 
inches? 

"Sergeant — I  cannot  say  that  you  are  far  astray,  but  it  is  more  than  three  feet 
six  inches. 

"Attorney — It  has  a  stone  floor  without  any  windows. 
"Sergeant — There  is  a  small  open  slit. 
"Attorney — Isn't  it  devoid  of  any  comfort? 
"Sergeant- — ^There  is  a  big  wooden  plank  in  it. 
"Attorney — There  are  no  sanitary  conveniences  in  it. 
"Sergeant — None. 

"Attorney — Was  the  accused  put  in  that  night? 
"Sergeant — He  was. 

"Attorney — ^And  kept  there  for  five  days  and  five  nights. 
'  'Sergeant — ^Yes. 

"Attorney — During  that  time  was  he  ever  taken  out  for  any  exercise? 
"Sergeant — No. 

"Attorney — ^Was  there  any  bed  there? 
"Sergeant — No. 
This  evidence,  which  was  a  portrayal  of  jail  conditions  so  usual  that  it  aroused  little 
comment  in  Ireland,  is  an  exact  verification  of  paragraph  5  of  the  American  Commission's 
charges  quoted  earlier  (see  p.  23)  and  which  was  denied  by  Chief  Secretary  MacPherson 
and  Wanamaker's  official  journalistic  whitewasher  of  British  officials  in  Ireland.' 

BELFAST  JAIL  OUTRAGES. 

Paragraph  4  of  the  same  Report  was  directly  borne  out  by  the  sworn  statements  of  a 

24 


& 


i 


young  Dublin  man  released  from  Belfast  jail,  and  which,  while  prohibited  by  the  British 
Censor,  were  given  wide  publicity  in  Ireland  and  America  in  1918.  These  statements 
were  given  to  the  public  by  Lord  Mayor  O'Neill  of  Dublin  and  other  prominent  Irisl^en. 
Further  statements  by  one  of  these  prisoners,  a  yotmg  lawyer  who  on  his  release  escaped 
to  America,  are  now  under  the  hands  of  the  compiler  of  this  pamphlet.  They  verify  the 
charges  of  unbelievable  brutality  made  repeatedly  against  prison  officials,  but  categorically 
denied  by  the  British  Chief  Secretary  MacPherson  in  a  statement  given  the  widest  pub- 
licity by  the  press  of  America. 

Here  is  one  statement  concerning  a  large  group  of  political  prisoners  from  all  parts  of 
Ireland — ^farmers,  lawyers,  editors,  merchants,  members  of  the  Irish  Congress — ^who  were 
imprisoned  in  Belfast  jail  for  openly  demanding  the  freedom  of  Ireland.  They  were  being 
treated  as  criminals  instead  of  political  prisoners  contrary  to  the  pledge  of  British  officials 
given  in  Dublin  in  1917.  On  their  refusal  to  be  classed  as  criminals  trouble  began.  A 
portion  of  the  statement  follows: 

"Word  was  passed  along  the  windows  of  the  top  landing  in  Belfast  Gaol  that 
the  wardens  were  forcibly  dragging  the  prisoners  down  to  the  cells  on  the  ground 
floor. 

"Now  there  was  an  understanding  between  the  prisoners  and  the  Governor 
that  we  were  not  to  be  placed  in  the  bottom  cells  as  they  were  very  badly  venti- 
lated and  in  other  ways  violated  the  most  ordinary  principles  of  hygiene.  This 
agreement  we  were  extremely  anxious  should  be  kept  at  that  particular  time,  as 
the  influenza  was  raging.  We  accordingly  decided  to  remain  where  we  were  as 
long  as  possible.  We  barricaded  oiu*  doors  and  forced  the  wardens  to  break  them 
in  to  get  us  down.  My  door  was  one  of  the  first  attacked,  and  after  battering  at 
it  for  about  five  minutes  with  mallets  and  crowbars  the  wardens  succeeded  in 
getting  in.  As  the  wardens  were  aware  that  I  was  a  barrister  and  understood 
my  legal  rights  they  were  afraid  to  indulge  in  any  excessive  brutality  and  con- 
tented themselves  with  giving  me  a  few  shoves.  I  was  then  dragged  down  along 
the  iron  stairways  to  a  cell  on  the  bottom  floor. 

"From  out  the  spy -hole  of  my  cell  I  saw  the  other  prisoners  brought  down. 
They  were  dragged  and  kicked  and  punched  and  otherwise  brutally  maltreated. 
After  about  half  an  hour  some  200  police  were  drafted  into  the  gallery  and  a  de- 
tachment of  soldiers  was  brought  into  the  prison.  The  police  dashed  up  with 
the  wardens  and  started  to  force  open  the  prison  cells.  The  din  now  became 
deafening,  the  prodding  of  mallets,  the  clash  of  crowbars  against  the  iron  doors, 
the  savage  roars  of  the  police  and  wardens,  the  agonizing  cries  of  wounded  and 
tortured  prisoners  and  the  dull  thud  of  bodies  dropping  from  step  to  step  along 
the  iron  stairway,  all  created  such  a  pandemonium  as  to  make  one's  head  swim. 
AH  the  prisoners  who  were  now  being  dragged  down  were  handcuffed,  most  of 
them  with  thin  bands  behind  their  back,  which  in  itself  is  a  form  of  excruciating 
torture. 

BAD  TREATMENT  OF  COUNCILLOR. 

"Every  form  of  brutality  was  indtilged  in  while  bringing  the  prisoners  down. 
I  saw  Mr.  McKenna,  the  Chairman  of  the  Kerry  County  Council,  one  of  the 
wealthiest,  most  influential  and  respected  gentlemen  in  the  south  of  Ireland, 
with  his  hands  manacled  behind  his  back,  a  policeman  brutally  dragging  him 
along  by  the  necktie,  which  he  had  twisted  so  tight  that  his  victim's  face  was  all 
purple,  his  tongue  was  hanging  out,  and  the  eyes  bulging  out  of  his  head,  while 
another  policeman  was  kicking  him  along  from  behind.  I  saw  Mr.  Corry,  a 
respected  farmer  in  County  Cork,  bleeding  profusely  out  of  the  nose,  his  hands 
manacled  behind  his  back,  with  one  policeman  dragging  him  along  by  one  ear 
and  another  by  the  other  ear,  and  a  third  kicking  him  from  behind. 

"I  saw  Mr.  N ,  from  Clare,  pumping  blood  from  a  three  inch  gash  in  his 

head,  his  hands  handcuffed  behind  his  backj  being  dragged  about  in  a  most 

25 


diabolical  fashion.  Many  more  such  instances  came  before  my  notice.  A  hose 
was  then  brought  into  the  wing  and  was  turned  on  some  of  the  remaining  prison- 
ers who  were  left  to  lie  all  night  in  their  wet  clothes,  with  their  hands  ^anacled 
behind  their  backs-^and  the  deadly  influenza  raging  in  the  city! 

"When  all  the  prisoners  were  down,  the  police  entered  our  cells  on  the  ground 
floor,  removed  all  the  furniture  except  tho  bed  board  and  manacled  those  of  us 
who  had  not  been  so  restrained  before.  We  were  left  in  this  condition  for  three 
days,  when  some  of  us  succeeded  in  removing  oiu"  handcu£Fs.  Others  were  so 
restrained,  some  with  muffs  in  addition,  for  six  days.  In  this  state  we  had  to 
attend  divine  service  and  on  Sunday  morning  the  vast  majority  of  the  prisoners 
received  the  Blessed  Sacrament  with  hands  manacled,  and  in  a  filthy  condition, 
because  their  restraint  prevented  them  from  conforming  to  the  usages  of  civilized 
beings. 

"We  were  then  sentenced  to  14  days'  solitary  confinement  on  bread  and  water 
and  our  conditions  were  not  ameliorated  until  the  public  opinion  of  the  world  was 
so  thoroughly  aroused  by  the  facts  (which  had  to  be  published  surreptitiously  in 
pamphlets,  and  for  the  distribution  of  which  a  young  boy  of  13  was  thrown  into 
gaol)  as  to  compel  the  prison  authorities  to  give  heed  to  the  most  ordinary  dictates 
of  common  humanity." 

BEATEN  IN  CELL  BY  WARDERS. 

(Suppressed  by  Censor.) 

Synopsis  of  statement  by  Mr.  T.  E.  Hardy,  FuUyard  House,  Armagh;   a  university  man 

who  had  graduated  with  a  high  record. 

"I  was  arrested  and  imprisoned  in  May,  1918,  for  an  alleged  seditious  speech. 
The  Offense,  if  any,  was  political  and,  accordingly,  should  have  qualified  me  for 
treatment  as  a  political  prisoner.  Nevertheless,  I  was  forced  to  associate  with 
the  vilest  criminals  in  Belfast  gaol,  with  bigamists,  wife-beaters,  drunkards, 
thieves  and  murderers.  Later  I  was  sent  to  Sligo  Gaol  and  was  there  treated  as 
a  criminal. 

"On  November  18th,  when  I  was  now  suffering  from  cold  and  hunger,  when 
my  cell  was  without  sanitary  utensils,  I  asked  six  times  in  the  course  of  the  morn- 
ing to  be  allowed  to  go  to  the  lavatory.  Each  time  I  was  refused.  At  2.30  I 
again  demanded.  While  speaking  I  walked  toward  the  door.  Immediately 
five  warders  rushed  towards  me,  knocked  me  down  and  while  on  the  ground,  with 
the  middle  of  my  back  on  a  broken  bed  plank,  a  warder,  whose  name  I  can  give, 
put  his  hand  on  my  throat  and  his  knees  on  my  chest  and  pummelled  me  with 
the  hand  that  was  free.  For  some  hours  after  I  lay  there,  unable  to  move.  That 
night  I  fainted  and  in  falling  injured  my  elbow  and  tore  the  skin  of  my  left  arm. 

"On  January  21st,  1919,  I  was  put  in  solitary  confinement  in  Belfast  gaol. 
For  five  weeks  I  was  locked  in  a  cell,  most  of  the  time  with  my  hands  handcuffed 
behind  my  back.  In  the  cell  there  was  no  window — ^most  of  the  time  no  utensils 
of  any  kind,  sometimes  nothing  but  the  four  bare  walls.  It  was  nothing  strange 
to  have  the  warders  and  police  enter  the  cells  and  knock  us  down  and  beat  us. 
The  police  used  their  batons  freely  on  me  while  I  lay  on  the  floor.  They  caught 
me  by  the  hair  and  bumped  my  head  against  the  cement  floor  of  the  cell,  while  they 
called  me  filthy  names. 

"On  the  back  of  my  head  is  a  lump  which  I  shall  carry  to  my  grave,  and  my 
left  arm  is  at  times  useless,  as  the  pain  in  my  left  shoulder  is  excruciating.  It 
was  while  I  was  in  handcuffs  in  Belfast  gaol  that  my  left  arm  \  as  injured. 

"I  am  prepared  to  swear  to  these  facts  before  any  tribunal." 

CRUELTY  TO  SICK  MEN 

Extracts  from  a  statement  made  by  Mr.  John  G.  Sheehan,  with  reference  to  conditions 
in  Belfast  Gaol  on  June  19th,  1919.  This  statement  was  suppressed  by  the  British 
Censor, 

"I  make  the  following  specific  charges  which  I  invite  Mr,  MacPherson  to 
refute  if  he  can.    These  within  my  own  knowledge  (the  major  part  of  them)  I 

26 


am  willing  to  support  on  oath.  The  others  are  made  on  information  'supplied  to 
me  by  fellow-prisoners  on  whom  I  can  rely  and  whose  names  I  am  willing  to  give. 
I  have  used  initials  to  avoid  giving  pain  to  many  persons,  but  shall  willingly  give 
full  names  to  anybody  interested. 

"(1)  During  the  influenza  epidemic,  sick  men  were  locked  in  their  cells  in 
the  early  evening  and  left  there  all  night  with  nothing  but  water  to  drink.  Many 
men  were  too  weak  to  attend  to  themselves  or  to  get  out  of  bed  to  ring  for  help. 
P.  M.,  as  a  result  of  getting  out  of  bed,  fell  and  cut  his  leg  badly.  He  lay  all  night 
partly  on  the  floor  and  partly  in  the  bed,  lost  a  considerable  quantity  of  blood,  was 
on  the  verge  of  death  and  given  Extreme  Unction.  He  was  ultimately  released  on 
medical  grounds. 

"(2)  The  attendance  was  insufficient;  J.  H.  was  extremely  ill  with  influenza. 
Pedlar  and  I  were  called  to  his  cell  to  stop  his  continuous  bleeding  from  the  nose, 
although  neither  of  us  pretend  to  medical  knowledge.  His  shirt  and  bedding 
were  soaked  in  blood,  indeed  caked  with  it, — the  result  of  two  or  three  days' 
continual  bleeding.  Blood  stains  were  on  the  wall  and  on  the  floor.  His  face 
was  smeared  with  dry  blood.  He  was  getting  ordinary  prison  diet,  which  was 
lying  in  the  cell  untouched. 

"We  did  what  we  could  for  him.  Later  in  the  evening  a  priest  came  to  admin- 
ister Extreme  Unction  to  another  patient.  We  brought  him  to  J.  H.'s  cell  and 
pointed  out  the  state  of  things.  On  seeing  the  man,  the  priest  at  once  admin- 
istered the  last  sacrament.     J.  H.  was  then  removed  to  hospital. 

"(3)  The  blankets  and  bedding  of  the  sick  men  (about  120)  reeking  as  th^y 
were  with  their  excessive  perspiration  and  full  of  influenza  germs,  were  never 
taken  away,  but  were  left  with  them  on  recovery,  and  for  aught  anyone  knows, 
were  subsequently  used  by  other  prisoners. 

SLOWLY  BREAKING  HEALTH  OF  PRISONERS. 

"(4)  Eighty  men  in  Belfast  Gaol  were  deprived  of  their  poUtical  status  on 
January  21st,  1919.  They  were  placed  in  .solitary  confinement  then  and  were  so 
kept  until  (a)  the  expiration  of  their  sentences,  or  (b)  their  discharge  in  broken 
health,  or  (c)  as  to  10  of  them,  until  deportation  recently  to  Manchester,  and  the 
balance  of  them — 5  in  number — are  still  in  the  same  condition.  That  is,  for  five 
months  now  those  men  have  never  left  their  cells  or  hospital  except  to  go  to  the 
lavatory  or  to  chapel.  With  one  exception,  they  have  all  been  handcuffed  for 
long  periods.  Their  only  exercise  consists  in  pacing  a  cell  about  18  feet  square. 
When  I  was  there  6  patients  had  to  sleep  in  it.  They  are  never  out  of  it  day  or 
night,  except  as  before  stated. 

"(5)  Whereas  on  January  20th  there  were  only  three  or  fotir  political  prisoners 
in  hospital,  since  that  date  53  out  of  a  specific  74  had  to  receive  medical  attention 
— roughly  75% — and  that  of  thirty-six  (that  is  50%)  their  health  was  so  bad  that 
the  Government  dared  not  risk  keeping  them  in  prison  any  longer. 

"(6)  J.  M.,  thrown  down  by  police,  pummelled  and  gripped  so  violently  in 
the  abdomen  that  a  portion  of  his  trousers  were  torn  off. 

"(7)     T-  M.  L.,  thrown  down  and  severelv  pummelled  bv  the  police. 

"(8)     E.  G.       The  like. 

"(9)     M.  R.     The  like. 

"(10)  J.  M.  Pepper  thrown  into  his  cell  through  the  spy  hole  by  wardens 
and  police.  He  banged  at  the  door  to  demand  an  explanation.  It  was  opened  and 
he  was  thrown  down  and  handcuffed. 

KNOCKED  DOWN— BRUTALLY  TREATED. 

"(11)  J.  M.,  a  constitutionally  weak  man,  was  suffering  from  an  injured 
arm  fpr  which  he  had  undergone  a  severe  operation.  He  had  his  name  down  on 
Sunday  morning  to  see  the  doctor.  Instead,  although  he  had  committed  no  of- 
fense, his  cell  was  entered  by  a  number  of  men  who  proceeded  to  remove  his 
plank  bed.  On  his  remonstrating,  he  was  knocked  down,  his  eye  badly  black- 
ened, his  weak  arm  severely  wrenched,  and  he  was  handcuffed. 

"On  the  intervention  of  the  Chaplain  he  was  brought  to  hospital  in  the  evening 
in  a  state  of  collapse,  was  seized  with  violent  vomiting  fits  and  the  doctors  had  to 
be  called  urgently  and  gave  him  special  treatment.  Ultimately  discharged 
broken  in  health. 

"(12)  Our  cells  were  stripped  eventually  of  even  the  bell  handles  and  the 
window  frames.     Nothing  was  left  but  the  fw^Us^  roof  and  floor,  the  bed  clothes, 

27 


a  slop  basin,  two  mugs  and  a  horn  spoon.     Our  food  was  served  on  the  floor.     The 
cell  floors  were  never  washed,  but  were  often  damp  and  the  mattress  became  wet, 
"The  hot  water  pipes — the  only  means  of  keeping  the  cell  partly  warm — were 
out  of  order  during  the  coldest  spells  of  the  year. 

BUILD  UP  FOR  RENEWED  PERSECUTION. 

Statement  by  Padraigh  na  Dalaigh,  North  Strand,  Dublin. 

"In  Mountjoy  at  present  there  are  forty  political  prisoners.  Nineteen  are 
receiving  political  treatment.  Twenty-one  are  treated  worse  than  criminals. 
Among  those  who  are  treated  worse  than  criminals  are  Mr.  Laurence  Ginnell, 
Representative  of  Westmeath,  Dr.  Higgins,  John  Cotter  and  Mr.  W.  Sears,  Rep- 
resentative for  Sligo.  The  latter  is  now  released.  Pearse  Beasley,  Representa- 
tive of  Kerry,  and  D.  P.  Walsh  are  deported  to  England.  Messrs.  O'Kelly, 
Sloane,  Rogers,  Mallory  and  eight  companions  were  in  close  confinement  on  pun- 
ishment diet  for  two  months.  • 

"They  were  handcuffed  night  and  day  and  stripped  by  the  wardens.     The  J 

handcuffs  were  not  removed  even  when  they  wanted  to  attend  to  the  course  of 
nature.  When  the  men  broke  down,  they  were  carried  to  hospital,  some  in  a 
dying  condition,  only  to  be  built  up  again  for  more  punishment.    These  men  are  > 

in  for  purely  political  offenses." 

In  concluding  a  summary  of  the  prison  experiences  buried  in  the  pages  of  "Two  Years 
of  English  Atrocities  in  Ireland,"  the  official  compilers  affirm: 

"Not  even  when  they  have  been  thus  tyrannously  torn  from  their  homes  and 
cast  into  prison  are  these  Irish  victims  of  alien  aggre.ssions  free  from  further  indig- 
nity. Irish  political  prisoners,  instead  of  enjoying  a  treatment  more  humane 
than  that  accorded  criminals,  are  in  fact  the  victims  of  a  special  prison  regime  that 
can  only  be  termed  barbaric.  Exaggeration  though  it  may  seem  to  be,  it  has 
nevertheless  been  proved  that  into  the  Irish  prisons  police  have  been  frequently 
introduced  who  have  batoned  these  helpless  men  in  their  cells.  Prisoners  are  put 
into  irons  on  the  slightest  pretext.  At  the  moment  of  writing  political  prisoners  in 
Belfast  Jail  have  been  in  handcuffs  for  live  weeks.  In  Belfast  Prison  also  men 
have,  by  order  of  the  Governor,  been  drenched  by  a  fire  hose  and  then  left  to  lie  in 
their  wet  clothes  all  night — manacled  and  unable  to  assist  themselves.  In  Mount- 
joy  Prison,  Dublin,  prisoners  were  also  hosed,  and  it  was  in  that  place  that  one  of 
the  worst  of  the  Irish  prison  tragedies  occurred." 
(The  reference  here  is  to  the  slow  murder  of  Thomas  Ashe.) 

HUNGER  STRIKES  TO  SECURE  POLITICAL  TREATMENT. 

The  hunger-strike  of  some  scores  of  political  prisoners  in  Wormwood  Scrubbs,  London, 
and  in  Mountjoy  Jail  this  month  (April,  1920)  went  on  until  many  of  the  men  were  prac- 
tically dying  of  starvation,  and  were  removed  to  the  hospital  on  stretchers.  This  protest 
(which  is  the  one  protest  all  Irish  political  prisoners  must  make  out  of  respect  for  their 
national  movement)  is  equivalent  to  the  assertion  that  patriotism  and  the  demand  for 
national  freedom  is  no  crime  and  must  not  be  treated  as  such — nor  an  imprisoned  patriot 
be  degraded  to  the  class  of  a  criminal. 

This  last  notable  hunger-strike  ended  successfully,  being  strengthened  at  the  last  by  a 
general  strike  of  organized  labour  in  Ireland.     Preparations  were  under  way  by  British 
railwaymen  to  strike  in  sympathy  and  Irish  farmers  were  organizing  to  withhold  from       ^ 
English  buyers  their  farm  products  A^hich  are  so  essential  for  Britain's  food  supply. 

The  first  of  the  Irish  prisoners'  hunger-strikes  is  memorable  for  the  death  of  Thomas 
Ashe.     It  was  described  on  their  release  by  some  of  the  other  prisoners  to  the  "Clare 
Champion"   (November  3,  1917).    The  realistic  narrative  quite  imconsciously  gives  an        * 
idea  of  the  heroic  quality  of  the  rank  and  file  of  Ireland's  patriots  to-day: 

"  *  *  *  On  Thursday  morning  bed,  bedding  and  all  cell  furniture  were  removed 
*  *  *  Shivering  with  cold,  without  food,  without  sleep,  without  air  or  exercise, 
in  their  naked  cells  the  prisoners  lay  *  *  *  But  the  lusty  voices  of  the  Claremen 
rang  out  through  the  halls  and  corridors  of  the  gloomy  prison  shouting — 'No  Sur- 
render. Victory  or  Death,'  and  in  snatches  of  song  they  recalled  the  deeds  of 
bygone  times,  the  glories  of  the  past  or  sang  of  the  bright  hopes  of  the  future. 

HORRORS  OF  FORCIBLE  FEEDING. 

"Then  the  inhuman  forcible  feeding  began,  as  cold,  weakened  from  want  of 
sleep  and  food,  they  were  dragged  out  by  brute  force  and  strapped  and  gagged, 
subjected — every  fibre  of  their  Ixnlies  in  violent  protest — to  this  horrible  indignity. 

28 


The  scene  at  the  first  operation  was  heartrending.  Clare  prisoners  were  the 
first  to  be  fed,  and  from  them  came  active  resistance  to  this  brutal  operation. 
Violently  resisting — the  struggles  and  moans,  the  chokings  and  retchings  of  the 
helpless  victims,  bound  and  gagged,  are  too  horrible  to  be  described  in  detail. 

'  Many  of  them  were  carried  away  insensible  and  flung  like  dogs  on  bare  and 
frosty  floors  to  live  or  die  as  the  mercy  of  a  Just  God  might  decree;  and  some  of 
them  were  thrown  into  undergrotmd  dimgeons — damp  and  foul — so  that  Eng- 
land's 'Might'  and  England's  'Justice'  should  be  vindicated  at  all  costs.  Day  by 
day  the  fight  went  on,  the  men  growing  gradually  weaker  and  collapsing.  *  *  * 
'  *  *  *  It  was  the  practice,  in  order  to  cheer  and  hearten  each  other,  to  sing 
patriotic  songs  through  the  cell-doors.  At  one  of  these  impromptu  concerts 
poor  Tom  Ashe  sang  'The  Dead  in  Arbor  Hill,'  a  song  of  his  own  composition. 
And  a  few  nights  after,  when  he  had  'carried  Ireland's  Cross,'  and  his  pure  soul  had 
gone  to  its  Maker  it  was  the  voice  of  a  Clareman — Michael  Brennan — that  siun 
moned  his  fellows  to  their  barred  and  bolted  doors  to  offer  up  with  broken  voices 
the  Rosary  in  Irish  for  the  loved  companion  who  had  died — that  they  might  be 
spared  to  work  and  strive  for  Roisin  Dhu  *  *  *  "  (Roisin  Dhu — the  Little 
Dark  Rose  or  Dark  Rosaleen — ^has  been  through  centuries  the  hidden  name  of 
Ireland's  rebel  patriots  for  their  coimtry.). 

LADS  OF  SIXTEEN  VICTIMIZED. 

After  a  hvmger-strike  of  five  days  forty- three  tried  and  untried  political  prisoners  in 
Cork  Jail  secured  ameUorative  treatment  for  those  of  their  number  whom  the  authorities 
sought  to  class  and  treat  as  criminals.  One  of  these  "criminal"  prisoners  was  a  boy  named 
Hogan  tinder  sixteen  years  of  age,  while  other  political  prisoners  in  Cork  Jail  include  two 
other  boys  under  seventeen  years  of  age.  The  Government  permitted  the  hunger-strike 
to  continue  until  these  youths  had  been  removed  to  hospital  in  an  utterly  collapsed  con- 
dition, and  the  remaining  forty  prisoners  were  too  weak  to  leave  their  beds.  The  con- 
cessions demanded  by  the  prisoners  in  the  first  instance  were  then  granted.  This  was 
the  twelfth  hunger-strike  which  has  taken  place  in  Irish  prisons  since  the  beginning  of 
1919.  It  has  proved  to  be  the  only  weapon  by  which  these  convicted  of  poUtical  offenses 
in  Ireland  can  force  from  the  British  Government  a  differentiation  between  the  condi- 
tions of  their  imprisonment  and  that  of  the  criminal  classes.  Yet  in  September  of  1917  at 
Dublin  and  in  January  of  1919  at  Belfast,  British  Officials — one  of  them  the  English  Chief 
Secretary  for  Ireland — definitely  undertook  to  give  full  political  treatment  to  eSl  political 
"offenders"  in  Ireland 

Glancing  at  the  total  of  thousands  of  arrests,  persons  who  have  not  met  and  talked 
with  Irish  political  prisoners  can  scarcely  comprehend  how  harrowing  their  experiences 
have  been.  Men,  women  and  children  alike — seized  from  their  homes  at  night,  thrust 
into  cells  too  often  not  fit  for  human  habitation,  they  have  been  neglected  during  the 
serious  epidemic  of  influensia,  frequently  released  in  broken  health,  some  like  Patridge 
and  Ward  and  others  released  to  die — ^all  to  know  every  humiliation  that  British  oflScialdom 
in  Ireland  could  put  on  them. 

But  in  spite  of  these  facts,  and  their  knowledge  of  what  open  support  of  the  Republic 
would  entail,  this  generation  of  Irish  patriots  have  gone  in  an  imending  stream  into  these 
jails  rather  than  yield  for  an  hour  in  their  determination  to  be  forever  free  of  England's 
yoke.  They  have  adapted  themselves  to  a  life  of  constant  alarms  and  hardships  with 
a  quiet  determination  that  is  heroic. 

It  was  with  full  knowledge  of  conditions  and  happemngs  in  Irish  Jails  that  a  distin- 
guished Englishman — Major  Erskine  Childers,  R.  N.  F.  C,  who  won  the  Distinguished 
Service  Order  for  his  valor  during  the  war,  made  the  frank  admission  about  the  imprison- 
ment of  Irish  patriots  in  the  London  Daily  Herald,  May  26,  1919,  which  we  quoted  at  the 
beginning  of  this  section. 

THE  ESCAPE  FROM  MOUNTJOY. 

The  heartrending  litany  of  agonies  endured  by  those  brave  victims  of  English  bru- 
tality and  militarism  has-  been  occasionally  reUeved  by  a  physical  triiunph  over  their 
heartless  jailors.  There  have  been  several  escapes  of  Irish  Volunteers  from  prisons,  but 
the  manner  in  which  some  of  them  were  effected  must  for  the  present  remain  unchron- 
icled.  The  details  of  the  escape  of  twenty  Irish  Republican  prisoners  from  Motmtjoy 
Jail,  however,  on  March  29,  1919,  are  described  in  a  booklet  now  in  course  of  publication 
by  the  Friends  of  Irish  Freedom,  which  also  relates  the  unique  hunger-striking  and  prison- 
breaking  experiences  of  Padraic  Fleming,  under  whose  leadership  the  Moimtjoy  men 
baffled  their  keepers  and  scaled  the  prison  walls — to  friends  and  liberty.     (See  page  64.) 

29 


Ill  (f). 

SENTENCES:  2,107. 

Of  6,157  men,  women  and  children  arrested  in  Ireland  for  political  offences,  only  2,107 
were  tried  and  sentenced.  Their  sentencsg^an  from  one  month  to  penal  servitude  for 
life.  Upon  pressvire  from  all  sides  the  life  sentences  were  remitted.  In  the  majority  of 
these  cases,  whether  sentenced  for  singing  a  National  song,  for  having  a  rifle,  or  buying  a 

rifle,  for  selling  the  flag  of  the  Irish  Republic  or  similar  "crimes,"  the  sentences  read  " 

months  hard  labour  and months  additional  in  default  of  bail." 

This  serves  to  illustrate  an  interesting  feature  of  the  Irish  struggle.  The  Irish  political 
prisoner  dragged  into  a  British  court  is  consistently  Sinn  Fein,  whether  he  is  a  mature 
man  trained  as  a  barrister  or  a  coxmtry  lad  still  in  his  teens.  He  will  neither  give  bail — 
thereby  admitting  himself  guilty  of  some  offence  and  willing  to  give  security  for  his  "good 
behaviour" — ^nor  will  he  recognize  the  British  court  into  whidi  he  is  summoned.  His 
attitude  is — 

"I  do  not  recognize  this  Court  nor  consider  that  it  has  any  jvuisdiction  over 
me.  I  am  a  citizen  of  the  Irish  Republic,  and  I  recognize  no  court  in  Ireland 
but  one  evolved  from  the  will  of  the  Irish  people." 

He  is  then  thrown  back  into  prison  with  a  sentence  of  " months  and months 

additional  in  default  of  bail." 

The  sliding  scale  of  British  court  sentences  in  Ireland  would  be,  like  moist  other  British 
things  there,  farcical  if  it  were  not  for  the  tragedy  lying  behind  it  all.  A  saloon-keeper 
and  owner  of  a  questionable  resort  was  convicted  of  murdering  his  barmaid  in  a  particu- 
larly brutal  way.  He  was  sentenced  by  the  notorious  Judge  Dodd,  the  pj0&cial  White- 
water of  Dublm  Castle  and  its  prison  system  in  Irelan4  to  four  montihs  imprisonment  in 
the  "first  division." 

INEQUALITY  OF  SENTENCE. 

The  Judge  explained  that  this  light  sentence  was  given  the  man  because  he  had  helped 
recruit  men  for  the  English  army  during  the  war.  On  the  other  hand  an  Irishman  of  the 
highest  character,  and  one  of  position,  was  given  two  years  hard  labovu*  for  singing  a  National 
song,  and  another  a  similar  sentence  for  trying  to  save  from  an^t  his  brother  who  had 
committed  no  other  "crime"  than  being  a  supporter  of  the  Irish  Republic. 

So  it  runs  through  the  wearisome  long  lists  of  thousands  of  political  prisoners:  barristers, 
magistrates,  members  of  Congress,  farmers,  aldermen,  labourers,  landowners,  professors, 
poets,  editors,  merchants — men  of  every  class  and  creed  in  Ireland  "have  come  under  the 
lash  of  the  English  knout,"  as  one  of  these  thousands  has  put  it. 


30 


ni-(g). 

SUPPRESSIONS  AND  PROCLAMATIONS:  389. 

The  only  proclamation  of  which  we  know  much  in  this  happier  New  World  is  the  Thanks- 
giving Day  proclamation. 

In  Ireland  a  British  proclamation  is  as  sinister  an  event  as  edicts  were  to  foreign  peoples 
seized  by  the  Roman  Empire  or  as  the  ukase  of  the  Russian  Czars. 

Last  year  Lord  French,  as  British  Viceroy  in  Ireland,  reached  a  state  of  mind  which 
can  only  be  described  as  "proclamation-frenzy."  Each  new  brain-storm  produced  a 
proclamation  or  suppression  of  something  or  somebody.  335  in  one  year — ^almost  one  a 
day.     A  Nero,  a  Caligula — ^might  well  be  satisfied  with  such  a  record. 

The  audacity  of  British  coercion  policy  in  Ireland — the  complacent  assurance  of  its 
officials  that,  controlling  the  cables  as  they  do,  they  can  get  the  ear  of  the  world  for  any 
story  they  care  to  "put  over" — were  strikingly  indicated  in  1918. 

After  the  unpardonable  kidnapping  of  91  Irish  leaders  in  May  in  an  effort  to  break  up 
the  new  National  party  they  came  to  realize  the  truth  of  the  defiance  flung  at  them  in  the 
little  Ulster  town  of  Cootehill  the  morning  after  the  kidnapping: 

"You  can  kill  our  leaders,  but  you  cannot  kill  Sinn  Fein," — cried  out  banners 
hung  acrass  the  streets  of  Cootehill.  It  was  the  superb  challenge  of  the  rank  and 
file  of  Ireland's  patriots: 

"You  can  kill  the  few  you  hold  helpless  in  your  prisons,  but  you  cannot  to-day 
slaughter  a  nation,  and  while  an  Irishman  exists  on  Irish  soil  he  will  stand  for  a 
free  Ireland." 

Dublin  Castle  soon  began  to  realize  this.  But  if  they  could  not  slaughter  a  nation, 
they  could  with  proclamations  penalize  and  suppress  it.  So  on  July  4,  1918,  when  the 
United  States  were  celebrating  the  anniversary  of  their  escape  from  the  British  Lion, 
British  officialdom  in  Ireland  prodlaim.ed  and  outlawed  over  four-fifths  of  the  Irish  Nation 
— ^making  illegal  all  public  assemblies  and  all  membership  in  all  the  great  national  so- 
cieties of  Ireland,  including  Sinn  Fein  which  has  scores  of  branches  in  every  county  in 
Ireland. 

With  the  grim  humour  of  their  kind  they  selected  Independence  Day  as  a  fitting  one  to 
demonstrate  that  there  was  still  a  green  comer  of  the  earth  that  could  be  made  to  squirm 
under  the  Lion's  paw. 

A  PROCLAMATION  EVERY  DAY. 
In  1918  there  were  only  32  proclamations.     In  1919  there  were  335.     How  Ireland 
fared  under  the  last  may  be  realized  from  a  calm  account  of  what  it  endured  in  1918.     Last 
year  is  really  indescribable  in  this  regard. 

"Not  even  a  semblance  of  free  speech  is  allowed  to  exist  in  Ireland.     In  this 
same  year  of  1918  as  many  as  thirty-two  proclamations  were  issued  declaring 
unlawful  national  activity  of  every  kind  and  culminating  on  July  4,  1918,  in  an 
official  declaration  that  every  assembly  of  the  Irish  people  in  any  part  of  Ireland 
was  from  that  date  illegal  and  criminal.     Men  who,  denying  the  right  of  any  alien 
government  so  to  proclaim,  spoke  publicly  after  that  date  were  tried  by  courts- 
martial  and  were  for  that  act  alone — ^and  without  any  relation  to  the  words  spoken, 
in  many  cases  given  the  atrocious  sentence  of  two  years'  hard  labour.  .  .  .     Per- 
sons who  were  known  to  have  been  listeners  to  these  speeches  were  arrested, 
tried  by  enemy  army  officers  .  .  .  and  actually  sent  to  a. criminal  jail  for  three 
months." 
Irishmen  continued,  of  course,  to  speak,  and  Irish  men  and  women  continued  to  listen 
and  British  Jails  grew  crowded.     For  whatever  the  individual  might  suffer,  they  were  de- 
termined the  Nation  should  be  free. 

SUPPRESSIONS  IN  1920. 

It  might  be  supposed  that  after  1919  nothing  was  left  in  Ireland  that  could  be  suppressed. 

But  the  Irish  are  irrepressible.     The  Irish  Congress,  itself  under  a  British  proclamation 

— but  holding  its  regular  sessions  in  spacious  cellars,  in  lonely  mansions,  in  a  variety  of 

31 


places— was  still  functioning.     It  established  an  Irish  Industrial  Commission  to  do  for 
Ireland's  trade  at  home  what  their  Consuls  were  doing  abroad.     This,  too,  was  sup- 
pressed. 

For  it  is  as  true  to-day  of  British  policy  as  it  was  in  1907,  when  Arthur  Chamberlain, 
brother  of  the  Imperialist  Statesman,  and  Chairman  of  Kynoch's,  stated  in  Dublin  "that 
it  was  a  definite  part  of  English  policy  to  prevent  any  serious  industrial  or  commercial 
development  in  Ireland;  that  he  was  convinced  that  policy  was  wrong,  but  that  it  was 
equally  held  and  practised  by  Tories  and  Liberals."  (Interview  of  Arthur  Chamberlain 
with  Arthur  GriflSth  in  July,  1907,  at  Dublin,  and  reported  by  the  latter  in  his  paper, 
"Nationality.") 

This  suppression  then  was  only  a  consistent  following  out  of  an  old  policy.  The  fol- 
lowing despatch  describing  the  suppression  is  from  Ireland  on  January  21,  1920: 

The  sittings  at  Cork  of  the  Irish  Industrial  Commission  set  up  by  Dail  Eireann, 
the  Republican  Parliament  of  Ireland  and  representing  over  75  per  cent  of  the 
Irish  people,  were  suppressed  by  force  yesterday.  Police  armed  with  rifles 
raided  and  occupied  the  City  Hall  in  which  the  sittings  of  the  Commission  were 
to  have  been  held.  The  Commission  moved  to  the  Municipal  Art  Gallery,  Cork, 
where  evidence  was  heard  for  a  few  hours,  when  that  place  was  also  raided  by 
the  police  and  the  Commission  ejected.  The  Irish  Industrial  Commission  is 
solely  concerned  with  an  enquiry  into  the  industrial  resources  of  Ireland  and  has 
no  connection  whatever  with  any  political  movement.  The  Irish  daily  and 
other  papers  have  been  warned  that  if  they  publish  any  of  the  evidence  given 
before  the  Commission,  they  will  be  suppressed.  The  members  of  the  Com- 
mission and  the  witnesses  who  have  been  called  before  it  have  been  drawn  from 
all  parties  and  are  acknowledged  experts  in  the  various  industrial  questions  with 
which  the  Commission  deals.  These  members  and  witnesses  include: — Mr. 
George  Russell  (AE);  Professor  O'Rahilly,  M. A.;  Col.  Moore;  Mr.  T.  John- 
son, treasurer  of  the  Irish  Trade  Union  Congress;  Mr.  R.  N.  Tweedy,  a  noted 
engineering  expert;  Professor  Wibberley;  Mr.  E.  E.  Lysaght;  Mr.  Smith  Gor- 
don, Member  of  the  I.  A.  O.  S.;  Sir  Henry  Grattan-Bellew ;  Professor  Ryan; 
Mr.  A.  Robb,  Ulster  Linen  Manufacturer,  etc..  etc. 


1 


32 


Ill— (h). 


SUPPRESSION  OF  53  NEWSPAPERS. 

In  addition  to  this  determined  effort  to  destroy  free  speech  in  Ireland  and  to  quiet  even 
verbal  protest  against  the  ruthlessness  of  her  militarism  in  Ireland.  England's  oflBcials 
have  suppressed  53  Irish  newspapers  since  early  1916 — have  prohibited  the  foreign  cir- 
culation of  28  others,  and  in  1919,  as  in  1916,  prohibited  the  circulation  of  American  papers 
in  Ireland. 

Behind  her  barricades  of  tanks,  machine  guns  and  soldiery — behind  a  passport  cordon 
which  could  be  passed  only  by  England's  friends  (which  included  the  professional  thugs 
and  burglars  who  have  been  let  in  from  England  to  Ireland  in  the  past  six  months) — 
behind  the  controlled  cables  and  with  the  genuinely  Irish  press  denied  to  the  outer  world 
— England  has  tried  to  keep  from  the  world  all  real  knowledge  of  her  ruthless  regime 
in  Ireland.  At  the  same  time  her  agencies  were  diligently  spreading  her  official  "unofficial" 
stories  about  her  gagged  victim — and  Ireland  was  traduced  in  every  comer  of  the  world 
where  modem  journalism  penetrates.  Acts  by  Irishmen  springing  from  her  own  terrible 
provocation — acts  committed  by  her  own  criminals  introduced  into  Ireland — were  given 
out  as  evidence  of  the  Irish  people's  lawlessness  and  their  "intrigues"  with  foreign 
governments. 

The  following  papers  have  been  suppressed  during  the  period  mentioned: 


"Ballina  Herald,"  Ballina. 

"Belfast  Evening  Telegraph,"  Belfast. 

"Bottom  Dog,"  Limerick. 

"Cork  Examiner,"  Cork. 

"Cork  Weekly  Examiner, 'I^Cork. 

"Cork  Evening  Echo,"  Cork. 

"Clare  Champion,"  Ennis. 

"Enniscorthy  Echo,"  Enniscorthy. 

"Evening  Herald,"  Dublin. 

"Fainne  an  Lae,"  Dublin. 

"The  Factionist,"  Limerick. 

"Irish  Freedom,"  Dublin. 

"Galway  Express,"  Galway. 

"The  Gael,"  Dublin. 

"Honesty,"  Dublin. 

"The  Irishman,"  Dublin. 

"Irish  World,"  Dublin. 

"Irish  Worker,"  Dublin. 

"Irish  Volunteer,"  Dublin. 

"Ireland,"  Dublin. 

"Kilkenny  People,"  Kilkenny. 

"Kenyman,"  Tralee. 

"Killamey  Echo,"  Killamey. 

'  In  April,  1918,  twenty-eight  papers 
Government. 


"Kerry  Weekly  Reporter,"  Tralee. 

"Kerry  News,"  Kerrv 

"The  Leader,"  Dublin. 

"Limerick  Leader,"  Limerick. 

"Limerick  Echo,"  Limerick. 

"Liberator,"  Tralee. 

"Mayo  News,"  Westport. 

"Munster  News,"  Limerick. 

"Meath  Chronicle,"  Navan. 

"Nationality,"  Dublin. 

"Newcastle  West  Observer,"  Newcastle  West. 

"New  Ireland,"  Dublin. 

"The  Republic,"  Dublin. 

"The  Spark,"  DubUn. 

"Scissors  and  Paste,"  Dublin. 

"Sligo  Nationalist,"  Sligo. 

"Sinn  Fein,"  Dublin. 

"Southern  Star,"  Skibbereen. 

"The  Voice  of  Labour,"  Dublin. 

"Waterford  News,"  Waterford. 

"Southern  Democrat,"  Charleville. 

"Westmeath  Independent,"  Athlone. 

"The  Worker,"  Dublin. 

"The  Workers'  Republic,"  Dublin. 

were  denied  foreign  circulation  by  the  British 


33 


Ill-(i). 

COURTS-MARTIAL:  519. 

"I  have  seen  some  of  these  courts-martial.  They  deliver  savage  sentences  for 
the  most  trivial  offences.  .  .  .  The  prisoner  does  not  plead  or  cross-examine. 
Nobody  cross-examines.  ..." 

Major  Erskine  Childers,  D.S.O.,  English  Veteran  of  the  Great  War. 

Irish  trials,  Judges  and  Juries  are  traditionally  a  joke  in  legal  circles  within  the  British 
Empire.  It  was  from  Irish  Courts  that  Alfred  the  Great  introduced  into  England  the 
Trial-by-Jury,  but  since  the  Brehon  Laws  of  Ireland  have  been  suspended  and  British 
law  in  operation  there,  trial  by  jury  in  Ireland  has  mostly  been  a  solemn  farce. 

The  Judges  are  necessarily  partisan,  or  they  would  not  secure  their  appointments. 
In  every  generation  the  names  of  certain  British  Judges  in  Ireland  have  reeked  in  the 
nostrils  of  decent  men.  And  Norbury  and  Sadlier  and  "Peter  the  Packer"  have  their 
prototypes  always.  The  jiuies  have  been  selected  and  stimmoned  by  the  police,  the  omni- 
present, always  active  agents  of  British  "law  and  order"  in  Ireland. 

To-day  when  the  police  find  it  increasingly  difficult  to  secure  any  man  willing  to  take 
their  viewpoint,  Dublin  Castle  has  had  to  drop  even  the  hypocrisy  of  trials  by  jury,  and  finds 
itself  better  served  by  "Courts-Martial" — "Crimes  Court" — or  Jedburgh  Justice,  which 
is  no  trial  at  all. 

The  "Crimes  Court"  consists  of  one  or  more  magistrates  especially  selected  by  the 
English  Viceroy.  They  are  frequently  ex-officers  of  the  British  army  of  occupation  and 
must  necessarily  hold  British  ideas  of  Irish  politics.  They  act  without  a  Jury,  and  their 
jurisdiction  extends  over  the  whole  Island. 

"In  other  words,"  says  "Two  Years  of  English  Atrocities  in  Ireland,"  "the  Ix)rd-Lieu- 
tenant  having  discovered  two  or  more  willing  tools,  can  and  does  send  them  to  any  part  of 
Ireland  where  the  conviction  and  imprisonment  of  certain  men  and  women  are  desired. 
In  actuality  the  "Crimes  Court"  is  a  sort  of  ambulatory  coiu-t-martial  made  the  meaner 
by  its  effort  to  masquerade  as  an  evidence  of  democratic  Justice," 

The  Courts-Martial,  which  have  been  held  with  increasing  frequency  in  Ireland,  are 
composed  of  officers  of  the  English  army.  "They  sit  to  'try'  alleged  political  offences 
under  a  Special  Code  designed  to  substitute  for  trial  by  jury  the  summary  Justice  of  the 
army  of  occixpation;  the  Judges  who  are  necessarily  steeped  in  political  prejudice,  have  no 
legal  experience  or  knowledge,  and  it  is  only  in  very  rare  cases  that  they  have  the  help 
of  a  competent  and  impartial  legal  adviser  to  guide  them;  they  are  generally  left  to  the  safer 
guidance  of  their  own  instincts."     (Ibid.) 

,  PROTESTANT  LANDOWNER  COURT-MARTIALLED. 

One  of  the  most  notable  of  the  Irish  patriots  who  is  now  serving  a  sentence  imposed 
by  court-martial  is  Robert  Barton,  T.D.,  a  rich  Protestant  landowner  of  Wicklow,  Min- 
ister of  Agriculture  in  President  de  Valera's  Cabinet,  and  who  was  himself  in  1916  as  a 
Volunteer  Officer  in  the  British  army  detailed  to  help  put  down  the  Easter  Rising.  What 
he  learned  then  changed  all  the  British  views  in  which  he  had  been  bred,  and  when  he 
could  secure  his  discharge  from  the  English  army  he  entered  upon  the  Sinn  Fein  political 
campaign  of  1918. 

Arrested  and  court-martialled  after  one  of  his  speeches,  he  escaped  from  jail  on  St. 
Patrick's  Day,  1919,  and  for  ten  months  was  "on  the  run" — which  means  an  outlaw  in 
British  parlance,  but  the  honored  guest  in  every  Irish  home  where  he  might  find  himself. 
The  daring  of  an  Irishman  "on  the  run"  was  well  exemplified  to  the  members  of  the  Ameri- 
can Commission  during  their  visit  to  Ireland,  for  Barton  not  only  entertained  them  in  his 
own  manor  house  by  historic  Glendalough,  but  he  attended  one  session  of  the  Irish  Con- 
gress, and  joined  them  as  a  guest  at  the  Lord  Mayor's  reception  for  the  Americans. 

It  was  true  that  a  cordon  of  soldiers  and  machine-guns  surrounded  the  Mansion  House 
for  hours  before  the  reception,  and  Barton  was  one  of  the  men  they  sought  as  they  ran- 

34 


^cked  the  Mansion  House— but  after  the  soldiers  withdrew,  Barton  with  his  comrade 
"outlaw,'  O'Kelly,  appeared  in  the  receiving-line  in  evening-dress  with  every  evidence  of 
a  calm  and-  imhurri«i  toilet. 

Early  in  this  year  (1920),  however,  Barton  was  again  seized  by  the  police,  as  they  raided 
a  house  hoping  to  find  other  patriots.  He  was  court-martialled,  and  is  now  serving  a 
three-year  sentence.  His  arrest  and  sentence  are  outrages  against  human  liberty.  So 
are  other  daily  occurrences  in  Ireland,  yet  the  Irish  people  are  going  ahead  in  their  con- 
test with  a  grim,  quiet  heroism  that  is  too  near  yet  to  be  fully  appreciated. 

Clement  Shorter,  an  English  Journalist  of  note,  stated  in  a  recent  interview  in  Dublin: 

.   "I  see  a  militarism  to-day  (in  Ireland)  which  is  unparalleled  in  Europe,  with 
machine  guns  and  tanks  and  armored  cars  everywhere." 
"•  .  . — and  Young  Ireland  is  not  dismayed." 

(London  Daily  Mail,   Dec.    11,   1919.) 


35 


IV, 

MISCELLANEOUS  OUTRAGES. 

"The  fact  is,  Castle  Government  in  Ireland  is  infamous.  Men  are  spirited 
away  without  charge  or  trial,  children  are  arrested  for  selling  flags  or  whistling 
derisively  at  the  police,  fairs  or  markets  on  which  the  whole  agricultural  population 
depend  for  their  livelihood  are  stupidly  suppressed  without  cause. 

"This  fatuous  reign  of  ineffective  coercion  brings  its  inevitable  train  of  crime 
and  outrage,  and  the  criminals  appear  to  be  about  the  only  persons  who  escape 
Mr.  MacPherson's  clutches." 

Capt.  Wedgwood  Benn,  English  M.P.,  in  letter  to  Edinburgh  Evening  News,  quoted  in 
Dublin,-  Evening  Telegraph  of  August  1,  1919. 

KIDNAPPING  CHILDREN. 

The  details  of  the  kidnapping  of  the  Connors  child  were  suppressed  by  the  British  censor 
in  Ireland,  but  are  given  here  in  a  statement  by  the  mother  of  the  child,  who  was  only 
11  years  old: 

"On  Monday,  February  10,  1919,  my  boy,  Timothy,  as  he  was  leaving  school 
at  Greenvant,  was  stopped  by  a  body  of  police,  who  asked  his  name;  then  the 
District  Inspector  asked  him  some  questions  and  he  was  lifted  into  a  motor 
wagon  surrounded  by  soldiers  and  police  and  driven  off  crying  to  Tipperary  bar- 
racks. His  father  happened  to  be  on  the  road  near  at  hand  and  saw  him  taken 
away,  but  the  police  refused  to  answer  him  as  to  why  he  was  taken  or  where  he 
was  to  go. 

"We  both  went  to  Tipperary  barracks  to  see  him,  but  though  we  waited  there  over 
two  hours  we  were  told  nothing,  except  that  he  would  be  all  right  and  we  were 
not  allowed  to  see  him.  No  one  was  allowed  to  see  him  and  no  account  of  why 
he  was  kept  was  given  to  anybody.  I  next  heard  from  rny  neighbors  that  he 
was  seen  at  Limerick  Junction  on  Friday,  14th,  with  a  big  coat  over  his  head  and 
,  crying  bitterly  as  he  was  put  into  the  Dublin  train  accompanied  by  four  police- 
men. At  Thurles  Station  he  was  also  seen  crying.  His  father  and  I  came  to 
Tipperary  to  find  out  about  him,  but  were  given  no  information.  He  was  kept 
in  Dublin  eight  weeks  and  three  days,  and  we  had  no  knowledge  where  he  was 
and  I  was  very  troubled  because  he  was  not  strong  but  a  nervous  child. 

"While  he  was  in  Dublin  he  was  examined  every  second  day  at  Dublin  Castle 
and  questioned  about  a  thing  he  knew  nothing  about.  He  was  promised  money 
and  clothes  and  that  he  would  have  a  good  time,  if  he  would  tell  that  such  and 
such  a  person  shot  the  police.  During  all  his  stay  in  the  police  barracks  a  police- 
man with  a  rifle  and  revolver  was  constantly  with  him  day  and  night;  he  was 
never  allowed  to  go  to  Church,  nor  to  stop  anybody  outside  of  the  police  and 
authorities. 

"My  other  son,  aged  18  years,  was  arrested  at  the  house  where  he  worked,  on 
February  12th,  and  had  to  endure  a  similar  ordeal,  being  kept  in  close  confine- 
ment, without  bed,  or  change  of  clothes,  exercise  or  company  for  seventeen  days, 
and  was  then  dismissed  without  explanation  or  apology." 

Statement  of  Johanna  Connors,  of  Greenvant,  Tipperary. 

HARSH  TREATMENT  FOR  WOMEN. 

"The  allegation  that  women  of  respectability  and  refinement  are  arrested 
without  warrant,  transported  to  distant  parts  and  badly  treated,  is  quite  true. 
It  happened  to  my  wife  after  her  arrest.  She  was  arrested  in  CrossmoHna  and 
ultimately  taken  to  Castlebar  to  be  handed  over  to  the  military.  They  refused 
to  receive  her.  She  was  then  kept  in  the  police  barracks  there  and  in  the  end 
turned  adrift  in  a  strange  town  and  refused  her  fare  back  home,  or  even  her 
hotel  expenses  for  the  night.  Altogether  she  was  ten  days  in  custody,  during 
which  time  she  had  no  sleeping  accommodation  or  other  accommodation  fit  or 
proper  for  a  woman.  .  .  ." 

Extract  from  statement  of  John  C.  Sheehan,  June  19,  1919. 

36 


POLICE  DESTROYED  WOMEN'S  SHOP. 

"The  Misses  Sharkey  of  Strokestown,  County  Roscommon,  who  were  twice 
imprisoned  for  selling  'seditious'  literature,  which  had  been  passed  by  the 
English  Press  Censor  in  Ireland,  had  all  their  goods  to  the  value  of  jl7,250 
coi5iscated  by  armed  poUce  on  May  22nd,  1919.  The  goods  consisted  of 
stationery,  books  and  general  drapery  goods.  As  a  result,  these  two  girls  were 
forced  into  bankruptcy.  The  goods  have  now,  after  six  months,  been  restored, 
but  in  such  a  condition  that  they  realized  only  M25  in  an  auction  sale." 

Irish  Despatch,  Nov.,  1919. 

JAIL  FOR  SINGING  SONGS. 

At  a  special  Crimes  Court,  held  recently  in  Castlebar,  Martin  Thornton,  Irish 
teacher,  and  Patrick  Hoban,  were  sent  to  jail  for  two  months  under  heavy  escort,  the 
former  for  reciting  a  "seditious"  recitation  and  the  latter  for  singing  a  song  called  "The 
Dublin  Brigade"  at  a  local  concert. 

Michael  Costello,  Drumsna,  was  at  Cavan  sentenced  to  fourteen  days'  imprisonment 
for  singing  a  song  when  passing  a  police  patrol. 

IRISH  REGIMENTS  HURRIED  AWAY. 

"Iri.shmen  in  London  who  take  no  part  in  politics,  looking  from  a  distance  at 
the  sore  plight  of  their  coimtry,  cannot  help  corelating  with  recent  untoward 
events  there  the  fact — of  sinister  portent — ^that  out  of  seven  regiments  ordered  to 
remote  Eastern  stations,  no  less  than  four  are  Irish  regiments.  Why,  they  ask, 
this  anxiety  to  get  these  Irish  regiments  out  of  the  way?" 

London  Correspondent,  Irish  Independent,  January  12,  1920. 

History  gives  the  answer.  In  the  years  before  the  prematurely  provoked  Irish  Rising 
of  1798  all  the  Irish  regiments  were  hurried  away  from  Ireland  and  the  country  gradually 
planted  with  British  soldiery.  At  the  same  time  with  18th  century  tactics  (more  cruel 
but  not  more  effective  than  those  related  here  of  1920)  the  country  was  being  driven  to 
despair  and  torture. 

Half-hangings,  pitch-tar  caps  on  head,  whippings  to  death  and  other  such  practices 
impelled  Sir  John  Moore,  the  gallant  hero  of  Corunna,  to  resign  his  command  in  Ireland 
as  a  protest  against  the  outrages.  Even  General  Abercrombie,  Chief-in-command,  also 
declined  to  remain  in  Ireland  when  he  learned,  as  he  6flBcially  reported,  that — "Every 
cruelty  and  crime  that  could  be  committed  by  Cossacks  or  Calmucks  had  been  committed 
in  Ireland  by  the  army  and  with  the  sanction  of  those  in  high  office." 

Abercrombie  and  Moore,  as  British  officers  and  gentlemen,  would  have  protested  in 
1920  against  the  assassination  of  Lord  Mayor  MacCurtain,  and  the  kidnapping  of  Lord 
Mayor  O'Kelly.     No  British  official  in  Ireland  is  known  to  have  protested  to-day. 

MILITARY  RULE  AND  COST  OF  LIVING. 

The  English  J<abour  Party's  Delegation  in  Ireland  on  visiting  Tipperary  issued  a  report 
stating  that: 

"The  delegates  were  very  much  surprised  to  learn  that  the  present  military 
prohibition  of  fairs  and  markets  was  responsible  for  increasing  the  cost  of  living 
to  the  people  of  Tipperary  by  at  least  125  per  cent.  The  representatives  whom 
they  met  repeated  the  emphatic  protest  which  they  heard  elsewhere  against 
those  prohibitions  of  fairs  and  markets  which  were  causing  immense  hardships, 
especially  to  the  poorer  classes." 

Lord  Inchiquin,  Col.  O'Callaghan-Westropp,  Lord  Monteagle  and  other  Irish  gentle- 
men of  humane  principles,  though  politically  opposed  to  the  Irish  Republic  party,  have 
protested  vigorously  against  the  uncalled-for  cruelty  of  British  suppression  of  cattle  sales, 
fairs,  etc.  As  indicated  by  the  Labour  Delegates  this  action  has  caused  great  hardship 
to  the  poor. 

HANGING  LABOR  LEADER  BY  HANDS. 
"Circumstances  attending   the   deportation   of   Alderman   WiUiam   O'Brien, 
secretary  of  the  Irish  Trades  Union  Congress,  have  caused  a  wave  of  wild  anger 
here.     Deportations  .of  well-known  men  are  matters  of  course,  but  in  this  case, 
cruel  and  unnecessary  brutality  was  used. 

"Officials  of  the  Irish  Transport  Workers'  Union  were  waiting  on  Kingstown 
Pier  at  the  time  a  military  motor  lorry  filled  with  armed  and  helmeted  soldiers 
drove  up.  • 

37 


"In  the  centre  of  this  imposing  escort  Aldennan  O'Brien  stood  with  his  hands 
lashed  at  the  full  stretch  to  a  beam  above  his  head.  He  was  thus  held  in  a  stand- 
ing position.  To  a  man  with  the  full  use  of  his  limbs  this  might  not  be  a  great 
inconvenience  for  a  short  time,  but  O'Brien  is  a  cripple,  and  broken  bones  in  one 
of  his  legs  made  the  position  one  of  cruel  torture.  It  might  be  said  that  he  was 
positively  hanging  by  his  hands  in  this  manner. 

"One  of  the  most  respected  and  beloved  of  Ireland's  labor  leaders  was  carried 
off  in  this  fashion  to  an  English  prison." 

Dublin  Correspondent  in  London  Daily  Herald,  March  6,  1920. 

SHOOTING  ON  IRISHMEN— APPROVED. 

"There  was  another  remarkable  anti-Irish  outbiu-st  in  the  House  of  Commons 
to-day  when  reference  was  made  to  the  conflict  between  troops  and  the  people  which 
has  plunged  Dublin  into  mourning. 

"The  Chief  Secretary's  story  of  the  shooting  was  vehemently  cheered  by  the 
Coalition,  especially  the  announcement  that  the  soldiers  fired  ten  rounds  into  the 
crowd.  Col.  Yates  then  suggested  that  the  officer  who  gave  the  order  for  shoot- 
ing be  commended,  and  the  outburst  of  cheering  with  which  the  suggestion  was 
greeted  showed  that  it  had  the  hearty  support  of  the  great  majority  of  English 
members  of  the  House." 

Special  Despatch  from  London  to  New   York  World,  March  23,   1920. 

TORTURING  EXPECTANT  MOTHER.  "  ;' 

"I  can  only  lift  a  comer  of  the  veil.     The  sum  of  stiff ering,  gallantly  and  for  the 
most  part  silently  borne  by  Irish  people  during  the  last  four  years,  passes  cqtppjifi  i 
tation.     Raids  upon  private  houses,  for  instance,  which  are  a  minor  fea^ijf^fiijf  jo 
the  regime,  number  over  20,000  in  the  last  two  years  alone.  ;/,.  t  ■'^uuA  • 

"I  begin  with  some  examples  where  hardship  to  women  and  chil(lr^-ji^j|J^ /^  !; 
chief  feature.  All  are  recent  Dublin  cases,  and  all  have  been  the  suV)ij^t.^f;^,.., 
scrupulously  careful  investigation.  irii-'i-.H 

"Mrs.  Maurice  Collins  was  within  five  weeks  of  her  confinement  when  her  |iqy3§  jfr.; 
at  65  Pamell  Street  was  raided  at  3.30  a.  m.  on  January  31  last.     The  usual  tWfiT;  j^  ^ 
der  of  knocks  was  followed  by  a  demand  in  vile  language  for  entry.     Mr.Qoi^^'-.. 
was  arrested  on  the  spot.     In  the  ensuing  search  the  officer  insisted  on  ex^i^Jfii^,.. ,  , 
the  bedroom  of  Mrs.  Collins,  who  had  jumped  out  of  bed  in  a  state  of  nervoij^rt^Ej i  , ,, 
ror.     He  was  sorry,  he  said,  but  it  was  his  duty.     Her  husband  was  carrif4.iQMA 
to  gaol  under  14B — the  lettre  de  cachet  section — and  eleven  days  later  Yf^^tjo 
deported,  suddenly  to  England.  i.^yT 

"At  the  news  she  collapsed,  was  prematurely  confined,  and  became  dangerously 
ill.  The  fact  being  verified  by  the  authorities,  her  husband  was  allowed  home 
on  parole  for  three  weeks,  due  to  expire  on  March  5th,  but  on  the  morning  of  the 
3rd  there  was  another  raid,  and  in  the  afternoon  a  third,  with  40  soldiers  and  two 
police.  Once  again  they  insisted  on  searching  the  woman's  room,  and  the  effebt 
on  her  was  so  serious  that  Mr.  Collins  received  an  extension  of  parole  till  the  12th. 

"On  the  10th  at  1  a.  m.,  as  though  there  was  a  method  in  this  crazy  persecu- 
tion, a  fourth  raid  fell  on  the  house  and  once  more  the  officer  gained  entry  to  the  v 
sick  room  in  spite  of  vehement  protests,  for  the  woman's  nerves  were  now  utterly 
unstrung.  As  a  concession  he  entered  alone,  leaving  the  fixed  bayonets  outside. 
But  this  was  the  climax;  there  were  pitiful  screams  at  every  movement — the 
flash  of  his  torch,  the  opening  of  a  wardrobe  door.  .  .  .  Women  of  England,  you 
have  votes  and  power:   this  is  yotu"  responsibility. 

"On  a  statement  by  the  doctor  to  the  Castle  that  he  would  not  otherwise  guar- 
antee the  woman's  life,  Mr.  Collins  was  allowed  to  stay  until  March  25th,  and  then 
went  back  to  the  English  gaol.  Neither  she  nor  he  know  or  are  intended  to  know 
when  they  will  meet  again  or  why  he  is  imprisoned.  Like  hundreds  of  others 
he  will  have  no  trial  because  the  Government  admits  there  is  no  evidence.  ..." 

Major  Erskine  Childers  in  the  London  Daily  News. 

PROTESTANT  "J.  P."  ROBBED. 

Mr.  George  O'Grady,  Justice  of  the  Peace  at  Rochestown,  Co.  Cork,  Ireland,  recently 
resigned  his  office.  Writing  to  the  Lord  Chancellor,  this  Protestant  gentleman,  owner 
of  an  extensive  farm,  said:  • 

38 


"On  March  9th  my  house  was  raided  by  military  and  police,  my  wife's  jewelry 
and  money,  to  the  value  of  200  pounds,  taken  and  I  was  placed  under  arrest  and 
taken  to  Cork  Prison,  being  liberated  after  five  days,  without  any  charge  made 
against  me  or  even  an  apology  for  my  detention. 

"In  consequence  of  my  own  treatment  ^nd  similar  unjust  cases  reported  to  me 
I  find  that  I  cannot  longer  conscientiously  continue  to  act  as  an  impartial  judge 
between  the  Crown  and  the  people." 

BITTER  INJUSTICE  IN  TAXES. 

The  total  revenue  extracted  from  Ireland  by  England  in  1919  was  $186,375,000. 

These  millions  are  handled  and  controlled  by  the  British  Treasury,  which  doles  back 
to  Ireland  for  civil  expenditures — sometimes  in  the  patronizing  form  of  "free  grants" — 
a  total  of  $67,685,000. 

Much  of  these  $67,686,000  go  to  pay  highly-salaried  English  officials,  paid  at  a  higher 
rate  than  American  Federal  officials  whether  President  or  Judge. 

Of  these  $67,000,000  over  $8,512,500  were  expended  upon  the  poUce  of  Ireland — and 
the  estimates  for  the  current  year,  1919-1920,  for  police  alone  are  about  $17,000,000. 

Of  the  remaining  $118,000,000  absorbed  into  the  British  Treasury  last  year  from  Ireland, 
the  Irish  people  have  not  the  accounting  of  one  farthing  of  it:  Unless  a  lurid  statement 
of  the  Hon.  Winston  Churchill  at  Westminster  be  considered  an  accounting.  He  claimed 
that  England  was  expending  over  $50,000,000  yearly  on  her  army  in  Ireland.  Who  pays 
the  price  of  Ireland's  torture — Ireland  or  America? 

STARVING  EDUCATION:  FATTENING  POLICE. 

There  are  visions  of  half-paid  teachers  and  of  raids  and  bayonet  charges  and  armored 
cars  behind  these  comments  in  the  "Irish  Independent"  in  its  editorial  columns  of  Novem- 
ber 20,  1919: 

"In  this  country  we  have  the  strange  anomaly  that  more  money  is  spent  upon 
police  than  on  primary  education.  For  the  latter  the  amount  voted  in  the  current 
year  is  only  $13,605,000;  the  police  vote  including  the  cost  tmder  the  Bill  now  to 
become  law  is  $17,675,395.  The  estimates  make  provision  for  11,602  police- 
men; the  number  of  teachers  in  the  service  at  the  end  of  December  1917  was 
15,820." 

TUBERCULOSIS  INCREASED  BY  LACK  OF  DRAINAGE. 

The  surplus  of  Ireland's  revenue  last  year  (extracted  and  absorbed  into  the  English 
Treasury)  over  the  amovmt  expended  in  Ireland  for  civil  administration  was  over  $118,000,- 
000. 

That  money  spent  on  arterial  drainage,  reforestation,  etc.,  as  some  of  it  would  have 
been  by  an  Irish  Government,  would  have  given  employment  to  180,000  yotmg  Irishmen. 
Lord  French  admits  (see  p.  7)  that  he  wants  to  see  this  remnant  of  Irish  manhood  get 
out  of  the  cotmtry — although  their  going  would  certainly  mean  that  England's  economic 
pressure  on  their  coimtry  had  driven  them  to  emigrate  as  an  alternative  to  semi-starvation. 

That  large  surplus  in  the  Irish  revenue  was  not  spent  in  Ireland  by  Irishmen,  however, 
consequently  this  year  again  destructive  floods  came  up  unhindered,  as  these  items  from 
the  Irish  daily  press  indicate: 

"The  English  Labovu:  Party  delegates  on  their  way  to  Belfast  travelled  through 
a  vast  extent  of  country  covered  by  water  in  the  vicinity  of  Portadown.     Thou- 
sands of  acres  are  inundated  along  the  River  Bann  area.     The  floors  were  actually 
encroaching  on  the  railway.     They  had  already  entered  Portadown,  many  of 
whose  inhabitants  are  gravely  inconvenienced."    January  28,  1920. 

"The  villages  along  the  valley  of  the  Middle  Shannon  are  suffering  indescrib- 
able miseries.  Village  after  village  had  in  parts  to  be  abandoned  during  the 
last  month.  The  whole  coimtryside  for  miles  inland  in  the  Coimties  of  Galway, 
Roscommon,  Westmeath  and  King's  County  is  one  vast  lake."    January  26,  1920. 

Commenting  on  the  flooding  of  the  Shannon,  the  Barrow  and  the  Bann  "Young 
Ireland"  on  January  31,  says: 

"As  a  result  of  the  persistent  refusal  of  the  British  Government  to  permit 
a  National  arterial  drainage  scheme  to  be  carried  out,  ten  of  thousands  of  acres 
of  arable  land  are  lost  to  the  coimtry,  and  the  productive  power  of  hundreds  of 

39 


>li>IIT*nW»i"'-- 


thousands  of  other  acres  has  been  decreased,  the  mean  temperature  of  the  coun- 
try has  been  reduced,  and  tubercular  disease  has  doubled  its  percentage  .  .  ." 
"In  110  years  ten  'Commissions'  appointed  by  that  Government  have  reported 
these  facts — and  all  reported  on  simple  schemes  by  which  this  periodical  devas- 
tation could  be  prevented.  In  every  .case  the  reports  have  been  ignored.  A 
hundred  years  ago,  an  expenditure  of  fifty  thousand  pounds  would  have  pre- 
served the  dwellers  by  the  Shannon,  the  Barrow,  and  the  Bann  from  these  inunda- 
tions. It  would  have  saved  the  people  of  the  country  millions  of  money — 
but  that  money  would  not  be  permitted  to  be  expended  by  those  who  imposed, 
gathered  and  enjoyed  the  taxes  of  the  Irish  people." 

COUNTY  COUNCILS*  OFFER  REJECTED. 

"A  few  years  ago  the  English  Government  ordered  an  'Official  Inquiry'  to  '' 
find  out  what  ten  Commissions  and  Inquiries  had  already  reported — the  cause 
and  remedy  for  these  inundations.  The  Inqtiiry  reported  as  usual,  and  the 
County  Councils  of  the  affected  areas  offered  to  supply  part  of  the  cost  of  a  proper 
system  of  arterial  drainage.  What  happened?  The  English  Government  re- 
fused to  permit  any  of  the  proceeds  of  that  Irish  taxation  which  it  sent  to  its 
Treasiuy  to  be  applied  to  the  work. 

"And  so  again  thousands  of  people  are  suffering  destitution  and  misery,  hun- 
dreds of  farms  are  under  water,  and  the  produce  which  should  supply  food  for 
the  people  is  being  destroyed — because  Ireland's  money  will  not  be  permitted 
to  be  used  to  serve  Ireland's  interests." 

SUPPRESSING  IRISH  LOAN  AND  PROGRAMME. 

"On  Tuesday,  September  9th,  1919,  a  Proclamation  was  issued  by  Lord  French 
and  the  Privy  Council  of  Ireland  suppressing  Dail  Eireann,  the  National  Assembly 
elected  by  the  people  of  Ireland  in  December,  1918.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that 
no  such  move  was  made  by  the  English  Government  until  Dail  Eireann  had 
framed  and  published  a  constructive  programme  for  Ireland.  Consvds  had  been 
appointed  in  foreign  countries  to  watch  Ireland's  trade  and  industrial  interests; 
the  maintenance  and  development  of  the  Irish  Fishing  industry  had  been  decreed, 
and  a  large  sum  of  money  authorized  to  be  used  for  this  purpose;  a  National  Com- 
mission of  Enquiry  into  the  Resources  and  Industries  of  Ireland  had  been  ap- 
pointed; and  a  National  Loan  floated  to  aid  these  and  other  purposes  of  National 
importance."     Irish  Despatch,  September   10,   1919. 

The  Consuls  proceeded  to  their  posts  abroad;  but  the  Commission  into  the  Resources 
and  Industries  of  Ireland  was  harried  and  hunted  in  its  sessions  and  finally  suppressed, 
newspapers  being  previously  prohibited  from  reporting  its  progress.  The  Irish  National 
Loan  is  being  subscribed  abroad  and  in  a  remarkable  degree  in  Ireland — considering  the 
handicaps  placed  upon  it  there. 

For  publishing  the  prospectus  of  the  Loan  the  entire  National  Press  of  Ireland  was 
closed  down.  Hundreds  of  houses  were  raided  by  military  and  police  in  search  of  lit- 
erature advocating  the  Loan.  Mr.  Alex  MacCabe,  Member  of  ParUament  for  South  Sligo 
was  sent  to  prison  for  three  months  and  Mr.  W.  M.  Swanton,  prominent  townsman  and 
merchant  of  Castletownbere,  County  Cork,  was  sentenced  to  five  months  imprisonment, 
the  former  for  speaking  publicly  in  favour  of  the  Loan,  the  latter  for  exhibiting  the  Loan 
prospectus  in  the  window  of  his  business  premises. 

A  man  from  Cork  has  been  sent  to  prison  for  two  months  for  carrying  a  Loan  prospectus 
in  his  pocket.  Warrants  have  been  issued  for  the  arrest  of  many  other  men  who  spoke 
in  favour  of.  the  Loan  and  the  latest  reports  from  Ireland  state  that  the  English  Govern- 
ment's campaign  against  the  Loan  "is  being  continued  with  a  vigour  amounting  almost 
to  ferocity." 

HEAVY  FINES  ON  IRISH  PEOPLE. 

The  Recorder  of  Galway — an  English  appointed  magistrate — ^has  awarded  1,200  pounds 
compensation  to  a  police  sergeant  who  lost  an  eye  whilst  endeavotuing  to  arrest  a  lunatic 
who  "held  the  police  at  bay  with  a  shot  gtm  and  ultimately  perished  in  the  flames  of  his 
own  cottage."  The  amotmt  is  to  be  levied  off  the  rate  payers  of  Galway  district  as  if 
they  were  responsible  for  the  madman's  actions.  This  decision  has  been  given  under  the 
Mali«ious  Injuries  Act  by  which  the  Irish  people  have  been  mulcted  in  fines  amounting 
to  many  hundreds  of  thousands  of  pounds  for  crimes  with  which  they  have  no  connec- 
tion and  no  sympathy.  This  system  is  the  same  as  that  pursued  by  the  Germans  in  in- 
vaded Belgium. 

40 


TREATMENT  OFjJIRISH  MEMBERS. 

In  December  1918 — 73  out  of  105  Irish  members  were  retiimed  by  constituencies  au- 
thorizing them  to  establish  an  Irish  RepubUc  Government. 

Sixty-three  (63)  of  these  have  been  imprisoned  by  the  English  Government — many 
of  them  more  than  once. 

Thirty-eight  (38)  of  these  were  imprisoned  without  trial  of  any  kind  for  periods  from 
three  to  eighteen  months. 

Twenty-five  (25)  were  tried  by  courts-martial  or  "removable"  magistrates. 

They  comprise  representatives  of  the  Episcopalian  and  Presbyterian  churches,  which 
two  churches  together  constitute  over  90  per  cent  of  the  Protestant  population  of  Ireland, 
as  well  as  of  the  Catholic  Church.  They  include  Barristers,  Landlords,  Farmers,  Jour- 
nalists, Doctors,  Professors,  Mantifactiorers,  Labor  Unionists,  Merchants  and  Public 
Officials. 

Last  autumn  the  British  Chief  Secretary  in  Ireland  stated  that  a  number  of  these  mem- 
bers of  the  Irish  Congress  had  been  arrested  on  charges  of  inciting  to  murder.  Arthur 
Griffith,  Acting  President  of  Ireland,  made  a  counter-statement  that  not  one  charge  of 
that  kind  had  been  made  against  the  Irish  members  arrested  and  the  Chief  Secretary's 
statement  was  consequently  a  false  statement. 

CIVILIAN  POLICE  ARRESTED. 

As  the  regular  police  force  in  Ireland  has  been  for  the  past  five  years  more  than  ever 
utilized  for  purely  political  purposes,  when  the  back-wash  of  Europe's  post-war  crime- 
wave  reached  Ireland  last  year,  Irish  farmers  in  ntunerous  districts  established  their 
own  Vigilance  Committees.  In  this  work  begun  at  Abbej^eale,  County  Limerick,  civil- 
ians organized  patrols  for  the  night,  and  they  soon  caused  the  district  to  return  to  its 
normal  quiet.  They  were  praised  for  their  efficiency  by  correspondents  of  London  papers 
in  the  country,  and  numerous  districts  followed  their  example.  T  sn — perhaps  because 
they  were  keeping  order,  perhaps  because  they  were  Sinn  Fein — the  British  armed  con- 
stabulary gathered  these  civilian  police  into  military  lorries — practically  encouraging  the 
petty  robberies  to  continue. 

ATROCITIES  OF  BRITISH  PRISONS. 

The  London  Daily  News  of  June  12,  1919,  states: 

"The  account  given  of  the  barbarities  inflicted  on  political  prisoners  in  Mount- 
joy  is  probably  only  too  accurate  in  the  main,  and  we  do  not  doubt  that  the  story 
will  do  good  service  in  forcing  the  full  facts  into  the  light." 

Under  the  heading  of  "Arrests"  some  space  has  been  given  to  the  miseries  imposed  on 
poUtical  prisoners  in  Belfast  gaol  (see  page  25),  but  there  are  certain  hardships  common 
to  all  British  jails  in  Ireland,  where  political  prisoners  are  treated  as  criminals.  *  The 
diet,  however  sufficient  it  might  be  for  a  physique  broken  with  crime,  has  been  utterly 
inadequate  for  the  healthy  young  men  imprisoned  for  political  reasons.  In  a  group  of  over 
60  in  one  jail,  each  lost  from  twenty  to  forty  pounds  in  a  month.  Not  alone  was  the  food 
insufficient,  but  it  was  particularly  bad  owing  to  deterioration  of  war-supplies. 

When  the  ventilation  was  too  bad  and  insufficient  the  prisoners  broke  the  windows 
and  let  in  the  air.  On  one  occasion  to  punish  the  protesting  prisoners,  the  windows  were 
screwed  down  so  that  not  a  breath  of  air  could  enter. 

A  seemingly  guileless  young  American  protagonist  of  the  British  jailers  cited  as  an 
indication  of  leniency  the  songs  and  shouts  of  the  prisoners  in  Belfast  jail  audible  in  the 
street  below.  A  statement  by  one  of  these  prisoners,  a  yoimg  baftister,  is  now  before  the 
compiler — ^and  there  is  that  in  it  which  provokes  to  smiles — and  to  tears.  For  the  young 
men  had  evidently  accepted  the  prison  life  and  its  rigors  to  be  as  much  a  part  of  the  strug- 
gle for  freedom  as  everyday  home-life  was  their  rule  in  times  of  peace. 

THE  ONENESS  OF  IRISH  PATRIOTS. 

The  simple  words  suggest  the  oneness  of  the  political  prisoners  in  this  and  all  jails.  It 
hints  at  the  fierce  stubborn  determination  steeling  young  men,  some  of  whom  had  pre- 
viously been  regarded  as  all  gentleness.  They  have  schooled  themselves  to  endure  prison 
life,  but  they  will  not,  even  at  the  risk  of  greater  hardships,  submit  to  the  treatment  of 
criminals  which  tacitly  would  slur  their  cause,  their  Republic,  their  country — their  own 
honor. 


*  See  page  64. 

41 


This  simple  statement  will  bear  pondering: 

"In  singing  and  talking  to  each  other  out  of  the  windows  (from  one  locked 
little  cell  to  another)  we  had  only  been  exercising  a  right  which  we  had  won  by- 
agitations  and  hunger-strikes  innumerable  .  .  .  and  if  those  people  (in  Belfast 
jail)  objected  to  us  exercising  our  prerogative  it  was  no  reason  why  we  should 
forego  it  to  make  matters  easy  for  those  who  had  sent  us  there  expressly  to  in- 
tensify our  pxmishment," 

A  "SINN  FEIN  OUTRAGE." 

When  Lawrence  Kennedy  was  shot  one  night  after  Christmas  in  Phoenix  Park,  the  cables 
announced  his  death  as  "another  Sinn  Fein  outrage,"  stating  that  he  was  one  of  a  party 
of  raiders  attempting  Ix)rd  French's  life.  Like  many  of  the  other  killings  ascribed  to  Sinn 
Fein  it  was  done  by  a  British  night  patrol.     The  inquest  proved — 

"...  that  the  three  young  supposed  raiders  arrested  in  the  Park  after  the  oc- 
currence were  perfectly  entitled  to  be  there,  that  they  were  returning  from  a 
dance  at  a  friend's  house,  and  that  they  were  surrounded  by  a  military  patrol, 
bayonets  placed  against  their  throats  and  chests,  and  it  was  only  by  the  mercy 
of  Providence  that  a  police  inspector  turned  up  and  saved  them.  They  were  re- 
leased after  twelve  hours. 

"The  other  supposed  raider  who  was  killed  with  the  military  officer  was  a  poor 
man  who  had  been  spending  Christmas  with  friends  and  who  was  on  his  way 
home  through  the  Park  when  he  was  killed  on  the  main  road  far  removed  from 
the  Viceregal  lodge.  He  was  surrounded  and  shot.  The  patrol  went  away.  They 
returned,  and  seeing  some  sign  of  life  in  the  unfortunate  man,  they  plugged 
more  shots  into  him.  The  sign  of  life  might  be  that  the  poor  fellow  raised  him- 
self, calling,  perhaps  for  a  drink  of  water,  or  for  mercy,  and  yet  as  the  evidence 
at  the  inquest  showed,  more  shots  were  put  into  his  body  'to  finish  him.' 

"The  military  officer  supposed  to  be  killed  by  the  raiders  was  killed  by  his  own 
men."  (Summary  of  testimony  at  Inquest,  at  which  the  murder  was  definitely 
admitted  by  the  Military.) 

"FREEDOM"  IN  IRELAND. 

Last  November  Lord  French  issued  a  request  to  the  local  authorities  jn  Ireland  that  all 
activities  should  be  suspended  for  two  minutes  at  11  A.M.  on  the  anniversary  of  the  Armis- 
tice, so  that  all  might  reverently  meditate  on  "Right  and  Freedom." 

At  11.20  A.M.  on  that  morning  Lord  French  ordered  his  military  and  police  to  burst 
in  the  door  of  the  premises  occupied  by  the  elected  representatives  of  Ireland  and  to  "ar- 
rest all  on  the  premises." 

Three  members  of  the  Irish  Congress,  elected  by  large  majorities,  together  with  the 
members  of  the  office  staff,  were  placed  in  a  military  motor  lorry  surrounded  by  soldiers 
with  fixed  bayonets,  and  driven  to  prison  to  meditate  on  England's  conception  of  "Right 
and  Freedom." 

IRISH  LANGUAGE  FORBIDDEN. 

"Little  more  than  a  month  ago  the  'London  Times'  described  the  Gaelic  lan- 
guage of  Ireland  as  among  the  'world's  rich  inheritances,'  for  its  light  on  social 
life  and  history  in  prehistoric  Europe,  for  its  fine  expansion  of  romance  and  its 
early — the  earhest — cultivation  of  poetry  in  rhyme.  The  movement  to  preserve 
that  'world's  rich  inheritance'  is  proscribed,  and  all  England  from  Cornwall  to 
John  O'Groats  is  tinmoved.  Its  members  are  arrested  or  expelled  from  their 
meeting-rooms;  ladies  of  position  and  education  who  collected  for  its  funds 
have  been  flung  into  police  cells  and  refused  food  for  fourteen  hours,  and  the 
monies  they  collected  confiscated.  The  Gaelic  festivals  are  prohibited  and 
dispersed  by  force  of  arms.  The  Prime  Minister  of  England  attends  and  speaks 
in  Welsh  at  the  Eisteddfod,  in  Wales.  The  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland  aJBFects 
an  interest  in  the  Comunn  Gaidhealach  of  Scotland.  Turn  to  Ireland — and  the 
Gaelic  tongue,  the  mother  speech  of  Celtic  nations,  is  proscribed." 

Dublin  Evening  Telegraph,  January  21,   1920. 

IRISH  EXHIBITION  SUPPRESSED. 

"The  Aonach  na  Nodlaig  or  Christmas  Exhibition  of  Irish  made  goods,  held 
annually  in  the  Mansion  House,  Dublin,  for  the  past  twelve  years,  was  suppressed 
by  the  English  Government,  who  occupied  with  troops  and  police  the  Exhibition 

42 


premises.  Thougli  the  Aonach  had  been  announced  for  some  weeks  the  notice 
proclaiming  it  was  served  on  the  Lord  Mayor  only  a  few  hours  before  the  opening 
of  the  Exhibition,  and  after  hundreds  of  traders  from  all  parts  of  Ireland  had 
been  put  to  the  expense  of  erecting  stalls  and  conveying  goods  and  commercial 
staffs  to  Dublin."  j^.^j^  Despatch,  December,  1919. 

The  suppression  of  the  Aonach  particularly  hurt  the  several  groups  of  women  and  girls 
in  Ireland  who  earn  their  livelihood  by  the  manufacture  of  art-craft  objects  and  other 
luxuries  fo^  which  there  is  a  large  sale  at  the  Christmas  season  and  for  which  they  pre- 
pare all  year. 

CARSON'S  "STRONGHOLD"  SHAKEN— 

AND 

BRITAIN'S  FIERCE  PUNISHMENT. 

It  is  a  subtler  form  of  outrage  by  which  this  news  of  the  Irish  elections  was  blurred  to 
the  outside  world. 

Up  in  Northeast  Ulster  is  a  distinctive  small  area  adjacent  to  Belfast,  which  city  was 
300  years  ago  (and  for  almost  2,000  years  before  that)  a  fishing-village  on  the  estates  of 
the  O'Neills.  This  comer  alone  out  of  Ireland's  32  counties  might  be  described  as  the 
zone  of  British  influence  in  Ireland,  and  it  is  a  notable  fact  that  the  Irish  municipal  elec- 
tions of  January  have  shattered  all  delusions  about  its  being  a  Carsonite  stronghold.  The 
elections  were  fought  on  the  basis  of  Proportional  Representation  which  gave  every 
possible  advantage  to  Carson's  British  "loyalist"  followers,  yet — 

"Deny  went  Siim  Fein. 

"In  Lisbum  a  Sinn  Fein  led  the  roll. 

"In  Liu-gan  a  'Loyalist'  majority  of  yesterday  is  now  a  minority  of  4,  opposed 
to  9  Labor  and  2  Nationalists. 

"In  Dungannon,  where  the  Carsonite  'Loyalists'  were  14  to  7  they  have  now 
only  a  majority  of  one. 

"In  Cookstown,  once  all  Carsonite  'Loyalists,'  the  retvims  give  7  Unionists  to  5 
Nationalists. 

Says  the  Dublin  Evening  Telegraph  of  January  21,  1920.     This  paper  pointed  out  that — 
"All  over  the  area  which  Mr.   Lloyd  George  proposes  to  stake  out  as  the  new 
State  of  Carsonia,  the  same  revolt  has  manifested  itself.    Lurgan,  Dungannon, 
Carrickfergus,   Lame,   Limavady,   Cookstown,  Lisbum — ^towns  which  to  good 
Covenanters  were  what  the  holy  places  of  Arabia  are  to  good  Moslems — ^have 
rejected  Carson  nominees  in  shoals,  and  set  in  their  place  Labour  men  and  Na- 
tionalists. ..." 
In  "this  upheaval  the  Carsonites  of  Ulster  have  taken  their  first  long  step  toward  Sinn 
Fein  and  its  gospel  of  a  free  Ireland — which  was  also  the  gospel  of  their  own  grandfathers 
in  the  days  of  Orr  and  Hope  and  Porter  and  Tone. 

INTIMIDATION  AND  SUPPRESSION. 

England's  officials  in  Ireland  did  everything  possible  to  prevent  a  free  expression  of 
the  people's  will  at  the  polls.  The  following  is  a  list  with  dates  of  the  acts  of  aggression 
committed  by  the  English  Government  in  an  effort  to  disorganize  the  Sinn  Fein  pre- 
parations for  these  Mimicipal  Elections  and  to  intimidate  the  supporters  of  the  RepubUcan 
Party  in  Ireland: — 

Sept  ^20,  1919.    Entire  Republican  Press  in  Ireland  suppressed. 

Oct    ^15,  1919.     Sinn  Fein  and  all  Republican  organizations  in  Dublin  suppressed. 

Oct     21,  1919.    Weekly  meetings  of  Sinn  Fein  Central  Club  suppressed. 

Nov.  12,  1919.  Military  and  police  raid  headquarters  of  Republican  Government  and 
arrest  and  imprison  the  staff. 

Nov.  27.  1919.  Sinn  Fein  and  all  Republican  organizations  suppressed  throughout  the 
whole  of  Ireland. 

Dec.    10,  1919.     Sinn  Fein  and  Republican  Headquarters  ordered  to  be  closed. 

Dec.  12,  1919.  Sinn  Fein  leaders  arrested  in  Dublin  and  Provinces  including  the  Secre- 
tary of  the  Sinn  Fein  Organization,  and  deported  without  trial.  Re- 
publican Headquarters  again  raided  and  literature  confiscated. 

Jan.      6,  1920.     James  J.  Hoey,  election  candidate,  arrested  at  Bray  and  deported. 

Jan.  7,  1920  Head  Offices  of  Sinn  Fein  Organization,  including  offices  of  Election 
Department  raided  and  closed  by  military  and  police. 

43 


Jan.  9,  1920.  Motor  permit  .strikers'  offer  of  reasonable  settlement  rejected  by  Gov- 
ernment, thus  preventing  use  of  cars  to  bring  electors  to  the  poll. 

Jan.     10,  1920.     Kingstown  Election  rooms  raided;   literature  confiscated. 

Jan.1-15,  1920.     Sinn  Fein  candidates  election  manifestoes  suppressed  all  over  Ireland. 

Jan.     15,  1920.     No  letters  delivered  at  Election  Dept.  at  Sinn  Fein  Headquarters. 

Jan.     15,  1920.     Sinn  Fein  election  posters  torn  down  by  police  all  over  Ireland. 

Jan.  15,  1920.  President  de  Valera's  cabled  advice  to  Irish  voters  held  up  in  transit  and 
not  delivered. 

Jan.  15,  1920.  Sinn  Fein  voters  in  Cork  City  attacked  by  organized  bodies  of  ex-soldiers. 
Lord-Mayor-elect  of  Dublin,  Thomas  O'Kelly,  seized  and  deported. 

BRITISH  THREATS  IN  JANUARY. 

The  following  English  papers  under  the  dates  mentioned  threatened  the  Irish  people 
with  intensified  military  repression  if  Sinn  Fein  carried  a  majority  at  the  Election: 

Manchester  Guardian  -  -  Jan.  7,  1920 

Daily  Mail    -        -  -  -  Jan.  12,1920 

Daily  News  -         -  -  -  Jan.  14, 1920 

Daily  Mail   -        -  -  -  Jan.  15, 1920 

Notwithstanding  these  threats  the  Irish  people  steeled  themselves  for  this  second  defi- 
nite constitutional  rejection  of  British  government,  fully  aware  that  in  doing  so  they  would 
bring  on  themselves  increased  military  terrorism. 

IRELAND'S  REPLY  TO  THREATS. 

In  Belfast  the  anti-Carsonite  minority  jumped  from  8  to  23  out  of  a  total  of  57. 

In  Ulster  as  a  whole — that  Ulster  advertised  by  Sir  Edward  Carson  and  the  British 
Government  as  a  province  solid  for  the  continuance  of  British  domination  in  Ireland, 
the  Municipal  Elections  resulted  in  only  255  Unionist  members  being  retttmed  on  the 
Ulster  Urban  Councils  out  of  a  total  of  573  leaving  the  non-Unionist  representatives  with 
318  seats  or  a  majority  of  63. 

In  all  Ireland  the  returns  are: 

Of  the  1 1  municipal,  corporations — 

9  are  Republican  (Sinn  Fein) 
1  is  Republican  and  Home  Rule 

1  is  Unionist  (Carsonite) 

11 

Of  the  118  Urban  Councils: 

64  are  Republican  (Sinn  Fein) 
26  are  Republican  and  Home  Rule 
26  are  Unionist  (Carsonite) 

2  are  Labour 

118 

FULFILMENT  OF  ENGLISH  THREATS. 

After  the  election  returns  were  annoimced  the  military  storm  broke — raids — over  1,170 
in  one  week— --arrests — assaults — assassin9,tions!  Previous  chapters  give  a  faint  outline 
of  the  military  "f rightfulness"  in  Ireland  since  then. 

The  Lord  Mayor  of  Cork  who  had  made  a  vigorous  beginning  in  assuming  the  duties 
of  his  office  was  assassinated  in  his  own  home  by  British  Government  police,  in  an  attempt 
to  intimidate  other  mimicipal  officials  planning  to  carry  on  the  work  for  which  the  people 
elected  them. 

Then  still — with  British  jails  filled  with  Irish  political  prisoners — with  Dublin's  Lord 
Mayor  a  prisoner  in  England — and  Cork's  Lord  Mayor  dying  from  the  assassin's  bullets, 
while  his  wife  heroically  solaced  him:  "You  are  dying  for  Ireland;  die  like  a  soldier" — the 
Irish  nation  stood  outraged,  sorrow-stricken,  grievously  woimded,  but  still  unbroken  and 
determined  to  be  free — like  Brian's  wounded  veterans  who  had  themselves  tied  to  stakes  at 
Clontarf. 

And  so  she  stands  to-day,  with  but  one  question — " 

"How  long,  O  Lord,  how  long?" 
44 


V. 


it 


CRIMES  ATTRIBUTED  TO  SINN  FEIN. 


M 


REVELATION  OF  POLICE  METHODS  IN  IRELAND. 

"Patriots  of  Ireland!  Champions  of  liberty  in  all  lands — ^be  strong  in  hope! 
Your  cause  is  identical  with  mine.  You  are  calumniated  in  your  day!  I  was  mis- 
represented by  the  loyalists  of  my  day.  Had  I  failed  the  scaffold  would  be  my 
doom.     But  now  my  enemies  pay  me  honor.  ..." 

George  Washington,  at  Mt.  Vernon,  1788. 

It  has  already  been  noted  with  condemnation,  and  it  will  pass  into  history,  that  as  soon 
as  a  truce  of  peace  was  signed  in  Europe,  and  England's  forces  could  be  withdrawn  from 
France — a  Reign  of  Terror  began  in  Ireland. 

This  statement  is  not  one  impelled  by  any  bias  in  the  mind  of  the  writer.  It  is  fully 
borne  out  by  statements  made  by  Englishmen  and  reproduced  in  Chapter  IV. 

Up  to  this  time — through  1916,  1917  and  1918 — the  Irish  people  endured  much  coercion, 
martial  law,  interferences  with  trade  and  food  supply  and  individual  outrages  that  were 
reported  in  the  censored  press  to  the  number  of  8,928. 

They  did  not  retaliate  quickly.  They  endured  in  a  way  that  will  make  the  word  Irish 
as  synonymous  with  endurance  as  Spartan  now  is.  But  after  the  armistice  was  signed 
and  England  began  a  fresh  war  in  Ireland— in  defiance  of  the  Irish  Nation's  self-determina- 
tion at  the  polls  in  December,  1918 — then  Ireland's  endurance  broke. 

Since  that  time  England  accuses  Irishmen  of  the  acts  of  retaliation  set  out  in  Table  A : 


COMPARATIVE  TABLES. 


Table  A. 


Table  B. 


Outrages  alleged  to  have  been  com- 
mitted by  Sinn  Fein  from  May  1st, 
1916  to  December  31st,  1919. 


Outrages  committed  by  the  armed 
forces  of  the  English  Government  in 
Ireland  from  May  1st,  1916  to  December 
31st,  1919. 


Murders 

20 

Murders 

59 

Firing  at  the  person 

77 

Firing  at  the  Person 

117 

Assaults 

63 

Armed  assaults 

364 

Injviry  to  property 

279 

Raids  on  private  houses  in  which  in 

- 

jury  was  frequently  done  to  prop 

- 

erty 

12,888 

Firing  into  dwellings 

41 

Arrests 

6,655 

Raids  for  arms 

589 

Deportations 

2,086 

Incendiary  fires 

70 

Sentences 

2,181 

Threatening  letters 

180 

Proclamations  and  Suppressions 

398 

Miscellaneous  offences 

210 

Suppression  of  newspapers 

54 

Courts  martial 

567 

Total 


1,529 


24,359 


On  a  careful  analysis  this  Table  A  resolves  itself  into — 

(a) — 20  murders. 

(b) — 77  firing  at  the  person. 

(c),  (d),  (e)  and  (f) — Assaults,  Injury  to  Property,  Firing  into  Dwellings,  Raids  for 
Arms — can  all  be  grouped  together  under  the  total  given  for  Raids  for  Arms  and 
attacks  on  barracks  of  Britain's  Royal  and  Armed  Constabulary.  These  items 
illustrate  Taylor's  dishonest  system  of  duplicating  charges.     (See  p.  46.) 

45 


(g),  (h)  and  (i) — Most  of  the  Incendiary  Fires  and  Miscellaneous  Offences  are  not 
political  offences  by  Irish  Republicans  but  offences  against  order  such  as  occur  in 
any  country.  The  "threatening  letters"  do  not  permit  of  this  classification  as 
ordinary,  for  they  are  largely  the  work  pf  the  British  police  forces.  So  common 
in  times  of  coercion  and  provocation  in  Ireland  were  these  "threatening  letters" 
during  the  past  century  that  the  "planting"  of  threatening  notices  by  the  con- 
stabulary in  Ireland  has  for  years  been  referred  to  as  jocularly  in  the  British  Empire 
?.s  Canada's  passion  for  signing  petitions.  The  first,  in  itself  a  siu-vival  of  the  land- 
war,  is  known  to  provide  the  constables  with  enUvening  incidents  according  to  their 
general  instructions  as  agents  provocateurs:  the  second  is  held  to  be  a  useful  means 
of  filling  up  long  quiet  winter  seasons. 

Since  the  completion  of  that  Table  A  (January  1,  1920)  England  has  accused  the  Irish 
people  of  fourteen  more  killings,  while  the  Irish  press  reported  six,  in  each  of  which  the 
jury's  verdict  definitely  fotmd  that  members  of  the  British  armed  forces  had  committed 
the  crimes.  These  include  the  barbarous  assassination  of  the  Lord  Mayor  of  Cork,  the 
miu-der  of  Milholland  of  Dundalk  and  other  leaders  in  the  Republican  movement. 

ATTEMPT  ON  LORD  FRENCH'S  LIFE. 

A  few  months  ago  an  attempt  upon  the  life  of  Lord  French,  British  Viceroy  in  Ireland, 
was  announced.  A  sage  comment  on  this  affair  was  made  by  George  Bernard  Shaw,  writ- 
ing on  January  3,  1920,. in  Sir  Horace  Plunkett's  paper,  the  "Irish  Statesman:" 

"When  such  incidents  used  to  occur  in  Russia  before  any  considerable  invest- 
ments of  French  or  British  capital  had  taken  place  there,  the  English  newspapers, 
notably  'The  Times,'  used  simply  to  ask  the  Tsardom  what  it  expected  if  it  sup- 
pressed every  popular  liberty  .  .  .  There  is  absolutely  no  remedy  except  the 
cessation  of  the  present  political  relations  between  the  two  cotmtries,  which  are 
simply  criminal  relations,  incapable  of  breeding  anything  outside  their  own  kind." 

The  whole  world  was  again  informed  of  the  "cold,  heartless  and  savage"  murder  of 
Magistrate  Alan  Bell,  aged  70,  on  March  26,  by  Irishmen  who  dragged  him  from  an  electric 
car  in  daylight  and  shot  him. 

SORDID  HISTORY  OF  BELL. 

But  the  cables  that  told  of  the  murder  of  this  old  man  refrained  from  telling  the  world 
that,  as  a  member  of  the  British  garrison  in  Ireland,  he  had  filled  his  years  from  his  cadet 
days  to  old  age  with  acts  of  violence  to  the  Irish  people  and  their  national  rights.  He 
began  his  career  as  a  protege  of  the  infamous  detective-chief,  James  Ellis  French,  after- 
wards convicted  of  felony.  In  the  Land  League  days  of  Pamell's  and  Davitt's  leadership 
and  ever  since,  Bell  carried  on  actively  the  work  of  the  British  garrison  against  Irish  nation- 
hood. He  became  notorious  after  the  murder  of  Peter  Dougherty,  near  Croughwell, 
years  ago,  when  in  spite  of  every  possible  police  effort,  his  subordinates  were  found  guilty 
of  the  murder — ^and  reprieved!  Expert  employer  of  agents  provocateurs  and  the  despised 
"G  men"  (secret  service  detectives,  Britain's  spies  in  Ireland),  he  spent  his  last  years 
resident  in  Dublin  Castle  in  a  web  of  malignant  alien  intrigues  against  Ireland — colleague 
and  collaborator  with  French,  Taylor  and  MacPherson. 

OFFICIAL  STATEMENTS— NEW  METHODS  OF  TAYLOR. 

This  official  White  Paper  list  of  "Crimes  attributed  to  Sinn  Fein"  is  a  new  method  of 
attack  upon  the  Irish  people  and  their  leaders  devised  by  Sir  John  Taylor,  who  has  been 
Lord  French's  most  active  aide  in  Dublin  Castle  since  French  arrived  there. 

This  is  shrewder,  safer  and  less  expensive  than  the  methods  employed  in  Pamell's  day, 
when  Taylor,  a  secret  service  agent  under  Arthur  Balfotu-  at  Dublin  Castle,  was  brought 
to  London  to  collaborate  with  Piggott  (known  in  history  as  the  "Times"  forger),  with 
Houston  and  Loames,  the  "Times"  solicitor.  With  the  last  Taylor  was  at  work  daily, 
and  was  liberally  paid  for  his  services  both  by  the  English  Government  and  the  "Times.' 

That  earlier  system  of  Taylor  and  his  colleagues  was  as  crude  as  it  was  daring,  and  in  its 
exposure  overwhelmed  its  makers  instead  of  victimizing  Pamell  as  intended.  In  the 
"White  Paper"  system  of  official  statements  Dublin  Castle  can  always  claim  "privilege" 
as  a  bar  to  any  action  such  as  Pamell  took  against  the  "Times."  In  this  wiy  English 
officialdom  can  slander  its  political  antagonists  in  Ireland  in  the  press  at  home  and  abroad 
— with  impunity. 

46 


METHOD  OF  DUPLICATING  CRIME. 

Taylor  has  a  unique  system  of  classification,  by  which  three  or  four  outrages  are  evolved 
from  one  ofifence.  For  example,  a  raid  upon  a  police  barracks  or  a  house  for  arms  appears 
under  these  various  headings: 

(a)  Assault  on  dwelling. 

(b)  Biurglary. 

(c)  Firing  at  the  person. 

(d)  Assault  endangering  the  person  of — 

(e)  Injury  to  property. 

Having  regard  to  the  enormous  provocation — the  manifold  injuries  and  outrages  in- 
flicted upon  the  Irish  people,  as  indicated  by  the  list  of  24,359  (to-day  over  32,000)  out- 
rages admitted  by  British  officials — ^it  is  to  a  New  World  mind  almost  beyond  compre- 
hension, that  Ireland's  retaliation  has  only  been  what  it  has. 

HEROIC  RESTRAINT  THAT  WILL  BECOME  HISTORIC. 

Through  1916-17  and  19185ithe  great  majority  of  the  Irish  people  continued  to  protest 
their  allegiance  to  the  Irish  Republic,  their  right  to  possess  arms,  to  drill  men,  to  speak 
the  Irish  language,  to  wave  and  sell  the  flag  of  the  Irish  Republic,  but  they  made  no  re- 
taliation on  the  British  forces. 

Nothing  perhaps  so  well  expresses  the  spirit  of  the  Irish  men  during  those  years  of  heroic 
restraint  as  the  Song  of  the  Red  Hanrahan,  an  early  hero  in  Ireland's  cause  against 
England: 

"Angers  like  noisy  clouds  have  set  our  hearts  abeat, 

But  we  have  all  bent  low  and  low — 
And  kissed  the  quiet  feet 

Of  Cathleen,  the  daughter  of  Houlahain." 

They  did  not  try  to  work  out  the  satisfaction  of  their  own  passions;  they  only  asked  how 
to  serve  Erin  best.  For  the  inspiration  of  the  Motherland — mystic  Cathleen — dark 
Roisin,  tragic  Banba — ^and  their  unquestioning,  self-sacrificing  devotion  to  her  is  as  po- 
tent to-day  as  ever  it  was  in  the  hearts  of  Irishmen. 

HOW  ENGLAND'S  REIGN  OF  TERROR  IS  DIRECTED. 

A  question  frequently  put  to  Ireland's  friends  in  America  by  people  honestly  seeking 
information  is  this: 

"Are  the  Irish  people  responsible  for  the  Reign  of  Terror  there  last  winter 
and  spring?  The  cables  frequently  suggest  they  are.  If  they  are  not,  why  is 
England  making  them  suffer?" 

The  actual  facts  can  not  be  obtained  by  reading  cable  despatches  to  America,  for  great 
and  rich  and  strong  as  this  country  is — the  strongest  and  richest  in  the  worlgl  to-day — 
America  does  not  control  a  single  cable  terminal  in  Europe,  and  all  American  cables  con- 
cerning Ireland  come  through  British  mediums. 

Setting  aside  for  a  moment  the  necessary  details,  the  Facts  may  be  stunmarized: 

Since  the  Easter  insurrection  of  1916  Ireland  has  been  held  under  British  military  law. 

Since  the  armistice  was  signed  in  November,  1918,  and  England's  forces  of  repression 
could  be  utilized  more  freely  a  period  of  military  Terrorism  has  existed  in  Ireland. 

This  has  not  been  a  period  of  general  and  indiscriminate  slaughter  as  in  the  days  of 
Elizabeth  and  Cromwell,  but  a  system  of  "official  anarchy"  and  outrage,  more  severe  than 
Germany's  military  rule  in  Belgium  during  the  occupation  of  that  country. 

Conditions  in  Ireland  now  are  only  comparable  to  a  similar  period  of  official  anarchy  in 
Ireland  immediately  preceding  1798,  and  which  at  that  time  impelled  General  Abercrombie 
in  protest  to  resign  from  his  command  of  the  British  forces  and  Sir  John  Moore  to  retire 
from  his. 

Whether  this  system  of  firm  government  was  evolved  in  the  quiet  of  Downing  Street,  at 
the  seat  of  British  Empire,  or  within  the  grim  walls  of  its  Imperial  outpost,  Dublin  Castle, 
the  plan  has  been  approved  by  both — while  its  immediate  prosecution  lay  with  three  men. 

These  three  men  are — 

(1)  Lord  French,  Viceroy,  who  was  for  very  grave  reasons  politely  cashiered  out  of  the 
chief  command  of  the  British  forces  in  France,  and  who  in  the  autumn  of  1918,  "swore  a 
mighty  oath  to  end  all  this  damned  nonsense  ...  'I  will  crush  the  vermin  underfoot,'  "  he 
vowed.     {Freeman's  Journal,  December  15,  1919.) 

47 


(2)  Sir  Ian  MacPherson,  who  found  shelter  in  Dublin  when  London  was  becoming 
unpleasantly  vocal  about  the  ignoble  post  he  had  previously  filled,  and  which  cannot  con- 
veniently be  described  otherwise  than  as  Lord  High  Supervisor  of  the  Red  Light  District 
behind  the  British  forces  in  France. 

(3)  Sir  John  Taylor,  British  Under-Secretary,  a  self-confessed  aide,  during  the  Balfour 
regime  at  Dublin  Castle,  of  the  Dublin  Castle-London  Times  plot  of  forgery  against  Pamell, 
and  one  who  has  grown  hoary  in  British  secret  service  and  Castle  misrule  in  Ireland.  It 
is  this  man  who  has  invented  a  more  subtle  method  to-day  for  defaming  the  Irish  people 
and  their  leaders  in  his  Government  Statements  of  "Crimes  attributed  to  Sinn  Fein." 

All  three  officials  have  been  the  direct  exponents  of  the  coercion  and  miUtarism  (or  as 
it  is  called  in  England,  "firm  government")  which  has  provoked  Irishmen  in  the  past  year 
to  retaliate.  As  the  British  Labor  Party's  delegation  reported,  there  were  no  murders 
of  policemen  by  young  Irishmen,  until  the  police  began  their  numerous  acts  of  violence. 

ARE  THESE  CRIMES  BY  SINN  FEIN? 

One  of  the  mvu-ders  charged  against  Sinn  Fein  was  that  of  a  resident  magistrate  in  West- 
port.  It  became  known  in  time  that  the  murder  grew  out  of  a  love-intrigue — the  magis- 
trate being  shot,  not  by  a  Sinn  Fein  member,  but  by  an  officer  of  the  Constabulary. 

In  KUlamey  on  February  3  there  was  another  case  of  the  mortal  wounding  of  a  con- 
stable, shot  in  the  panic  following  a  bayonet-charge,  when  the  police  had  fired  upon  an 
Irish  crowd.  The  wounded  man  first  declared  that  the  civilians  had  shot  him — then  learn- 
ing that  he  was  dying  he  admitted  that  a  brother-constable  had  accidentally  shot  him 
when  firing  on  the  crowd  but  for  fear  of  htirting  his  comrade's  standing  he  had  blamed  it 
on  the  civilians. 

When  the  boy  Francis  Murphy  was  shot  in  his  home  as  he  sat  studying  one  night,  British 
sympathizers  spread  the  tale  that  the  lad  must  have  been  a  member  of  some  secret  society 
or  was  killed  in  a  private  feud!  The  inquest  very  clearly  laid  the  guilt  upon  the  shoulders 
of  the  military. 

It  is  not  alone  with  regard  to  murders  that  men  in  Ireland's  national  party  refuse  to 
be  saddled  with  the  long  list  of  crimes  compiled  by  Taylor.  Several  men  convicted  of 
crime  in  Ireland  during  the  past  year  were  ex-soldiers,  and  more  than  two  were  war- veterans 
aspiring  to  join  the  constabulary. 

At  Galway  in  January  two  of  these  veterans  were  sentenced  for  an  attack  upon  the 
police  barracks  at  Roundstone,  but  at  the  time  of  the  attack  it  was  cabled  to  this  country 
as  a  "Sinn  Fein  outrage." 

The  London  Daily  Herald  for  January  28th  reports  a  meeting  of  the  Ballinasloe  CouncU, 
which  refused  to  pay  for  extra  police  because  acts  of  violence  previously  committed  in 
the  Banagher  and  Birr  districts  were  done  by  a  gang  of  ex-soldiers  who  had  the  protection 
of  the  pplice. 

"I  was  present  at  a  fair  in  King's  County  (Banagher  Fair),  said  the  Chairman, 
and  saw  these  ruffians  assault  people  in  the  presence  of  the  Royal  Irish  Constabu- 
lary, and  all  the  while  the  police  were  laughing  and  looking  on  at  the  whole  thing." 

ENGLISH  PROFESSIONAL  CRIMINALS  IN  IRELAND. 

"In  February  Messrs.  Grace  and  Co.,  Jewellers  of  Talbot  Street,  Dublin,  as  a 
result  of  their  premises  having  been  burglarized  four  times  in  twelve  months,  pub- 
Ushed  their  decision  'to  discontinue  business  until  proper  police  regulations  are 
forthcoming.'  Although  Ireland  is  the  most  heavily  policed  country  in  Europe, 
the  police  in  Ireland  are  used  almost  solely  either  as  spies  upon  the  National 
Movement  or  as  the  armed  suppressors  of  it.  As  a  consequence,  many  gangs  of 
criminals,  seizing  this  opportunity  have  come  to  Ireland  from  Great  Britain,  and 
are  allowed  a  free  hand  even  in  the  principal  Dublin  Streets. 

"The  Irish  daily  press  has  published  details  of  two  burglaries  in  Amiens  Street 
— a  principal  Dublin  thoroughfare — during  which  the  burglars  were  disturbed 
by  the  owner  of  one  of  the  premises.  They  declared  in  strong  Cockney  accents 
that  they  were  'Sinn  Feiners.'  Their  mispronounciation  of  the  term — 'Sin 
Fitters' — was  conclusive  evidence  that  they  were  not  Irishmen  and  that  they  had 
not  been  in  Ireland  long  enough  to  learn  the  correct  pronounciation." 

Irish  Bulletin,  February,  1920. 
At  a  court  held  in  Dublin  in  January  in  three  out  of  five  convictions  for  crime  the  offen- 
ders were  professional  English  crooks,  who  could  gain  admission  to  Ireland  although 
Irishmen  of  high  character  resident  abroad  are  often  denied  that  privilege. 

48 


A  COUNTRY  FREE  OF  SERIOUS  CRIME. 

It  is  traditional  of  Nationalist  Ireland — except  during  periods  of  political  agitation 
and  coercion,  as  in  Pamell's  Land- War  and  to-day — ^that  the  country  is  practically  free 
of  serious  crime.  Even  this  year  the  Recorder's  report  at  the  Criminal  Sessions  showed 
only  six  criminal  cases,  four  of  which  were  larcencies.  In  Donegal  and  Derry,  two  other 
Sinn  Fein  centres,  the  Judges  received  white  gloves. 

In  1916  Sir  John  Maxwell  stated  to  John  A.  Murphy,  of  Buffalo,  N.  Y. 
"Ireland  is  crimeless  except  for  sedition." 

And  it  must  also  be  noted  that  no  killing  was  rightly  or  wrongly  charged  to  Sinn  Fein 
until  after  the  close  of  1918 — ^imtil  after  49  admitted  murders  had  been  perpetrated  by 
British  Armed  forces  upon  the  Irish. 

WHY  IRELAND  HATES  THE  "POLICE." 

Sir  Horace  Plunkett  writing  of  the  Irish  police  force  and  British  rule  there  says: 

"This  monstrous  substitute  for  statesmanship  is  super-imposed  upon  the  largest 
police  force  in  proportion  to  population  in  the  world." 

Ex-Sergeant  F.  I.  McElligott,  a  former  member  of  this  force  writes  of  them: 

"The  police  are  not  to  blame:  they  are  the  best  disciplined,  and  in  one  sense 
the  most  efficient  police  force  in  the  world.  But  the  system — a.  nationalized, 
armed  and  political  force,  employed  in  maintaining  a  brutal  and  indefensible  sys- 
tem of  police  government — is  wholly  responsible  for  the  outrages  and  murders 
of  to-day. 

"Ireland  has  long  enjoyed  the  'privilege'  of  a  nationalized  police  force,  i.  e.  a 
semi-military  organization  officered  by  a  class  ascendancy  and  controlled,  not  by 
Local  Authorities,  but  by  the  Crown,  as  a  substitute  for  peace  officers.  Unlike 
all  others  policemen  the  R.  I.  C.  are. equipped  in  military  fashion  with  rifles, 
bayonets  and  bombs  and  their  barracks  (not  stations)  are  now  converted  into 
fortresses.  They  are  political  inasmuch  as  they  are  employed  to  maintain  'the 
party  in  power,'  to  persecute,  prosecute  and  coerce  all  who  do  not  hold  views 
in  agreement  with  Dublin  Castle,  to  prohibit  and  suppress  the  rights  and  opinions 
of  the  majority  and  to  permit  and  (as  in  Lame  gtm  running  and  Belfast  drilling) 
to  encourage  offences  by  the  minority.  Hence  the  R.  I.  C.  have  earned  the  title 
'enemies  of  their  country'  and  unfortimately  they  are  socially  ostracised  even 
by  their  own  kith  and  kin.  Such  is  the  situation  as  seen  from  without.  Seen 
from  within  it  is  much  more  serious." 

TERRIBLE  INDICTMENT  OF  SYSTEM  BY  AN  EX-SERGEANT. 

"...  With  over  11  years  experience  in  the  R.  I.  C.  (half  that  time  a  Sergeant) 
I  say  that  the  inner  system  is  based  on  this  principle,  that  it  is  necessary  to  per- 
petuate and  maintain  ill  feeling  between  police  and  people — whilst  waiting  for  an 
'atmosphere'  favourable  for  a  settlement.     This  is  both  easy  and  simple  under 
.      the  same  military  system  where  the  police  are  not  under  the  control  of  local  authori- 
ties or  even  Chief  Magistrate  of  a  City.     In  Ireland  a  policemen  cannot  be  sta- 
tioned in  his  native  county,  in  any  county  adjoining  it,  or  in  any  coimty  where 
himself  or  his  wife  have  any  relations.     'Familiarity  with  the  public'  is  an  offence 
against  police  regulations  punishable  with  transfer.     Hence  it  is  ordained  that 
the  poHoe  force  must  be  'ahenated  from  the  people'  from  top  to  bottom  ..." 
"Physical  coercion  is  applied  openly  and  secretly  by  Dublin  Castle.     It  is 
.    applied  openly  where  force  is  wron^ully  and  vmreasonably  used  in  order  to  create 
ill  feeling  between  the  people  and  the  police.     It  is  applied  secretly  by  many 
'secret  orders'  which  goad  and  drive  the  people  into  violence,  retaliation  and 
rebellion,  ..." 

POLICE  ARE  OBLIGED  TO  BE  VIOLENT. 

"Dublin  Castle  says — 'Remember  it  is  essential  that  the  people  shall  he 
roughly  handled." 

"The  proportion  of  police  to  population  cannot  be  justified  even  on  'military 
grounds.  Scotland  with  roughly  the  same  area  and  population  as  Ireland  has 
less  than  6,000  police;  Ireland  has  a  fixed  quota  of  over  12,000.  As  the  country 
is  over  policed  and  the  police  over-officered,  there  is  an  'authority'  for  every  3.1 
men  and  a  Sergeant  for  every  3.88  constables, 

49 


"Even  under  the  Act  of  Union  the  police  system  in  Ireland  is  brutal,  obsolete, 
uneconomical  and  indefensible.  The  present  deplorable  condition  of  our  unhappy 
country,  and  above  all  the  spectacle  of  a  fine  police  force  murdered  and  ground 
down  without  mercy  or  consideration  between  those  who  are  determined  by  all 
means  and  at  all  costs  to  maintain  'law  and  order'  and  those  who  by  any  means 
and  at  any  cost  are  determined  to  make  the  present  government  of  Ireland  im- 
possible, force  against  force  is  the  remedy  and  'damn  the  consequences.'  As  a 
resvdt  of  this  policy  the  police  force  has  broken  down,  barracks  have  been  closed 
all  over  the  country  and  the  people  left  without  any  police  protection.  Even 
so,  the  police  are  powerless  to  protect  others  by  force,  powerless  to  protect  them- 
selves." 

PLAIN  SPEECH  ABOUT  GOVERNMENT  USE  OF  POLICE. 

"The  Army  of  Occupation  is  for  the  protection  of  semi-military  police  and  to 
help  them  in  maintaining  law  and  order.  It  has  failed.  Increase  the  army  by 
500,000  men,  put  a  guard  or  garrison  in  every  city,  town  or  village,  or  scatter 
them  like  sheep  on  the  mountams,  and  it  will  make  no  difference.  Take  them  all 
away  and  a  'state  of  war'  still  exists.  In  other  words,  force  wiU  not  prevent  the 
Irish  people  from  demanding  self-determination,  and  unforttmately  the  Govern- 
ment are  employing  the  poUce  to  suppress  this  demand  in  the  most  provocative 
manner  possible. 

"The  deficiency  is  in  moral  force,  and  the  police  themselves  are  convinced  that 
moral  force  never  tried  will  succeed  where  military  and  semi-military  force  have 
,been  tried  and  failed.  By  immediately  disarming  the  R.  I.  C,  'raids'  on  bar- 
racks will  be  prevented  and  all  police  stations  throughout  Ireland  will  be  safe 
from  attack  as  the  D.  M.  P.  stations  are  at  present.  In  the  outskirts  of  the  city 
of  Dublin,  in  the  village  of  Chapelizod  there  are  two  police  stations  within  100 
yards  of  each  other — one  R.  I.  C.  and  one  D.  M  .P.  The  former  is  locked,  barred 
and  bolted  and  the  men  are  confined  within  a  fortress  of  sandbags  and  wire,  armed 
with  rifles,  bombs  and  rockets.  The  latter  is  even  more  open  than  Bishopgate 
Police  Station  in  London  and  less  likely  to  be  'raided.' 

"The  police  question  then  goes  to  the  root  of  the  Irish  Question  itself.  One 
cannot  be  settled  without  the  other." 

Mr.  MacPherson,  the  British  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland,  alleges  that  the  shooting  of 
policemen  is  the  excuse  for  the  present  regime  of  rigorous  repression  in  Ireland.  The 
Report  of  the  English  Labour  Delegation  which  visited  Ireland  lately  contains  the  fol- 
lowing : 

"No  evidence  was  forthcoming  to  prove  that  the  shooting  of  policemen  pre- 
ceded the  application  of  the  policy  of  rigorous  repression." 

MANUFACTURING  CRIME  IN  IRELAND. 

This  Continent  has  not  been  without  instances — though  rare  fortunately — of  manu- 
factured crime.  The  most  appropriate  for  use  here,  because  of  its  related  origin,  was  the 
dynamiting  (in  a  mild  fashion)  of  a  summer-home  owned  by  the  Imperialist  Lord  Athelston 
in  Montreal  in  1917.  This  was  done  by  a  small  group  oi  very  young  French-Canadians, 
two  of  whom  had  been  sentenced  for  larceny.  Months  later  evidence  was  given  in  Court 
to  show  that  the  crime  had  been  done  on  the  instigation  and  with  the  physical  aid  of  a 
special  agent  of  the  Department  of  Justice  at  Ottawa,  who  while  gaining  the  friendship 
of  these  lads  and  suggesting  to  them  a  series  of  outrages,  was  actually  drawing  a  salary 
from  the  Canadian  Goremment,  and  reporting  his  "progress"  each  week. 

This  was  Canada's  first  notorious  agent  provocateur — the  first  introduction  of  British 
police  methods  of  manufacturing  crime  and  announcing  it  as  done  for  poUtical  reasons. 
It  Was  a  most  sinister  incident,  and  one  that  made  thoughtful  Canadians  very  grave.  The 
political  complications  arising  out  of  the  war  had  given  the  occasion  for  this  despicable 
innovation  of  British  secret-service  tricks.  In  Ireland  they  are  as  old  as  the  "Royal  Irish" 
Constabulary,  established  by  England  after  the  so-called  Union. 

WHOSE  CRIME  IS  THIS? 

With  what  has  been  quoted  here  from  Sergeant  McElligott's  statement,  it  is  easy  to 
understand  how  a  boy's  jeer  or  the  cheering  of  political  prisoners  being  driven  by,  has 
frequently  caused  in  Ireland  baton  and  bayonet-charges  upon  defenseless  citizens.  The 
crowd  in  retaliation  wounds  or  kills  a  policeman — and  the  incident  is  blazoned  to  the 
world  as  another  Irish  outrage!     Whose  crime  is  this? 

50 


One  eflfort  to  manufacture  Irish  outrages  was  frustrated  on  January  28,  1919,  by  the 
alertness  of  American  Army  watchmen  in  their  aerodrome  at  Middleton,  Cork  County. 
An  attempt  to  burglarize  the  place  resulted  in  the  Americans  capturing  two  of  the  rob- 
bers. When  their  disguises  were  removed  they  stood  revealed  as  members  of  England's 
armed  forces  in  Ireland — Constables  Cadogan  and  Rogers!  They  received  only  a  few 
months'  imprisonment,  though  young  Irish  lads  are  sentenced  to  two  years  with  hard 
labour  for  singing  patriotic  songs.  Had  the  constables  escaped,  this  attack  on  American 
property  would  have  been  wired  to  every  comer  of  America  as  a  Sinn  Fein  outrage.  In 
fact,  this  was  done  with  a  very  similar  happening,  when  the  American  steamer  Pensacola 
was  "raided  for  arms"  last  auttmin  at  Cork  by  men  masked  as  Rogers  and  Cadogan  were, 
— men  who  were  not  Sinn  Fein  supporters. 

It  was  only  an  unusual  circumstance  and  a  partial  exposure  by  his  comrades  in  crime 
that  revealed  the  guilt  of  the  infamous  Sergeant-Constable  of  the  "eighties,"  whose  per- 
jured testimony  had  sent  hundreds  of  innocent  Irishmen  to  British  prisons.  Usually  with 
the  people  helpless  and  the  British  government  shielding  the  criminal  constable,  the  latter 
goes  on  his  way  "making  crime,"  unharmed  and  unhampered. 

Even  when  the  constable  or  soldier  does  not  make  special  individual  eflfort  to  injure 
the  Irish  people  and  win  money  rewards  or  promotions,  his  very  presence  and  the  system 
under  which  he  works  provokes  the  Irish  men  to  rid  their  country  of  this  alien  excrescence. 

ENGLISH  GOVERNMENT  SUBORNS  PERJURY. 

The  following  despatch  from  Ireland  arrived  just  before  going  to  press: 

The  suborning  of  perjury  by  the  Headquarters  of  the  English  Military  Government  in 
Ireland  and  by  the  Chief  ofificials  of  the  Royal  Irish  Constabulary  has  just  been  exposed 
in  the  Dublin  Law  Courts. 

Mr.  John  Madden  of  Gortaha,  County  Tipperary,  was  arrested  on  September  3rd, 

1919,  on  a  charge  of  having  murdered  at  Lorrha  in  the  same  county.  Sergeant  Brady  of  the 
Royal  Irish  Constabulary.  Having  passed  through  a  series  of  preliminary  investigations 
he  was  returned  for  trial  before  a  "Special  Jtiry"  in  County  Dublin.  The  venue  was 
selected  because  the  Special  Jurors  of  County  Dublin  are  hostile  in  politics,  and  in  the 
majority  of  cases,  in  race,  to  the  mass  of  the  Irish  people.  A  conviction  could,  the  English 
Law  Officers  in  Ireland  believed,  be  more  easily  secured  there  than  anywhere  else  in  Ire- 
land.    On  April  22nd,  1920,  the  trial  of  Madden  before  this  Jtuy  began.     On  April  23rd, 

1920,  the  case  concluded.  From  the  list  of  Special  Jurors  the  Crown  picked  twelve  gentle- 
men who  were  known  to  be  particularly  amenable  to  their  direction.  The  Crown  Coimsel 
opening  his  statement  laid  special  stress  upon  the  importance  of  the  evidence  of  two  Crown 
witnesses — Constable  Foley,  Royal  Irish  Constabulary,  and  John  Gilligan — ^and  repre- 
sented that  in  calling  these  witnesses  the  Crown  was  acting  in  the  name  of  the  Irish  people 
for  the  protection  of  law  and  order. 

The  evidence  of  Constable  Foley  was  that  the  night  of  the  murder  was  a  bright  moon- 
light night  and  that  in  the  two  or  three  seconds  before  he  hiriiself  was  shot  he  saw  clearly 
John  Joseph  Madden  firing  at  and  killing  the  sergeant.  In  cross-examination  he  said 
there  was  no  doubt  whatever  that  Madden  was  the  man  who  fired.  When  he  was  reminded 
that  there  could  be  no  moonlight  on  the  night  in  question,  as  a  new  moon  two  days  old 
had  set  an  hoiu:  before  the  murder  occurred,  he  still  held  it  was  a  bright  moonlight  night. 
In  further  cross-examination  he  admitted  that  he  had  taken  at  least  eight  pints  of  porter 
^  before  going  on  patrol. 

John  Gilligan  swore  that  he  was  one  of  the  gang  that  Madden  led  out  to  murder  Ser- 
geant Brady.  He  described  the  circvunstances  of  the  murder  in  full  detail.  A  gun  was 
•  given  him.  He  took  his  orders  from  Madden.  He  saw  Madden  fire  and  after  the  mur- 
der saw  him  hide  the  gtm  in  his  house.  But  when  cross-examined  he  admitted  that  he 
had  made  previous  depositions  concerning  the  miurder  which  were  totally  at  variance  with 
the  evidence  he  was  now  giving.  He  achnitted  further  that  at  the  time  he  was  preparing 
his  evidenop  he  was  living  at  the  Headquarters  in  Dublin  of  the  Royal  Irish  Constabu- 
lary and  had  visited  Dublin  Castle,  the  Headquarters  in  Dublin  of  the  English  Govern- 
ment. As  the  cross-examination  proceeded  he  broke  down  so  completely  that  the  Crown 
Counsel  threw  him  overboard  and  denounced  the  witness  they  had  previously  praised  as 
a  "degenerate  informer."  Several  reputable  witnesses,  including  a  doctor,  proved  that 
the  night  of  the  murder  was  a  particidarly  dark  night,  and  witnesses  of  as  gcxxi  standing 
gave  evidence  that  Madden  was  in  his  own  home  at  the  hoiu:  of  the  mttrder.  The  packed 
jury,  after  25  minutes'  retirement,  brought  in  a  verdict  of  "not  guilty,"  and  Madden  was 
discharged. 

51 


From  the  hearing  of  the  case  and  the  verdict,  it  was  clear  that  not  only  had  Gilligan 
and  Constable  Foley  perjured  themselves,  but  had  obviously  been  coached  as  to  the  evi- 
dence they  should  give,  by  the  Chief  Officials  at  the  Depot  of  the  Royal  Irish  Constabu- 
lary and  by  Dublin  Castle  as  well.  Neither  Foley  nor  Gilligan  has  been  arrested  for  his 
perjury  I 

The  London  "Daily  Herald"  in  an  editorial  in  its  issue  of  April  26th  commenting  on 
this  trial  says: 

"It  shows  also  that  there  is  procurable  in  Ireland  'evidence'  upon  which  the 
lives  and  liberties  of  Sinn  Feiners  can  be  sworn  away  by  perjurers,  prestimably 
for  a  consideration.  And  it  would  seem  to  be  in  the  interest  of  some<me  to  see  that 
this  kind  of  evidence  is  provided  when  required." 

HOW  RETALIATION  IS  PROVOKED. 

Retaliation  is  provoked  by  incidents  like  the  mturder  of  James  O'Brien  of  Rathdrum  as 
he  stood  in  his  doorway  watching  the  unnecessary  parading  of  police  through  the  Fair 
Green  of  the  little  town — ^like  the  repeated  arrest  of  an  old  and  honored  man  like  Lau- 
rence Ginnell,  T.D.,  even  when  he  was  so  broken  with  neurasthenia  from  previous  impris- 
onments that  he  could  neither  read  nor  wTite — ^like  the  absolutely  unjustified  arrest  and 
ill-treatment  of  Chaplain  O'Donnell,  an  Australian  officer  who  among  Australia's  70,000 
soldiers  of  Irish  blood,  was  one  of  the  most  popular  and  most  highly  eulogized  by  his  own 
government  for  his  services  in  raising  men  and  money  for  the  war. 

The  storm  raised  in  Australia  and  England  by  the  Chaplain's  ill-treatment  soon  secured 
his  release  and  an  official  censure  for  those  responsible.  But  there  was  no  rebuke  or  re- 
dress in  the  case  of  the  military  who  persecuted — 

"...  a  man  'on  the  run,'  a  phrase  which  has  a  special  significance  in  Ireland, 
who  ventured  to  return  to  his  home  because  his  wife  was  ill  and  his  child  dying 
of  convulsions. 

"The  first  day  he  was  back  the  military  visited  the  house  to  arrest  him.  He 
pointed  out  to  the  officer  in  charge  of  the  raiding  party  that  there  was  no  one  in 
the  house  but  himself,  his  sick  wife  and  his  dying  child.  The  officer  replied  that 
he  did  not  care  and  that  the  husband  was  going  out  with  him.  The  conversation 
took  place  in  the  bedroom,  and  the  man  was  taken  out  by  force  in  spite  of  his 
protestations. 

"At  six  o'clock  in  the  morning  the  mother  found  the  child  was  nearly  dead. 
She  got  up  with  her  child  and  crawled  a  distance  of  about  a  mile  and  a  half  to 
her  own  people.  She  fainted  twice  on  the  way  and  at  half  past  seven  was  dis- 
covered in  a  state  of  collapse  on  her  parents'  doorstep.  The  child  was  dead,  and 
it  is  doubtful  whether  its  mother  will  recover." 

IRISH  GIRLS  ASSAULTED  BY  SOLDIERS. 

Nor  is  there  any  redress  for  crimes — ^not  of  a  poUtical  nature — ^by  British  police  or  sol- 
diers in  Ireland,  when  as  on  "March  3  two  soldiers  attempted  to  assassinate  two  yoimg 
girls  returning  from  the  movies  at  9.30  one  night.  The  girls,  fighting  desperately  for  their 
honour,  were  so  battered  and  bruised  about  face  and  body  before  help  came  that  the  sur- 
geons did  not  know  if  they  would  recover. 

In  view  of  the  facts  reproduced  here,  it  is  not  remarkable  then  that  when  young  Irishmen 
went  out  on  Easter  Monday  to  destroy  the  barracks  of  the  British  Constabulary  in  Ireland, 
their  action  was  greeted  with  applause  by  every  man  the  world  over  in  whom  Gaelic  blood 
still  runs  pure.  Their  quietly  determined  action  left  the  police  unharmed,  but  they  de- 
stroyed over  200  of  the  miniature  British  fortresses  in  wluch  the  police  dwell. 

"With  bomb  and  torch,"  a  Chicago  editor  commented,  "they  cleared  many  a 
pleasant  countryside  of  those  sinister  excrescences,  which,  with  the  imion  poor- 
houses,  form  the  chief  monuments  of  British  misrule  in  Ireland.  As  the  result 
of  that  Easter  Monday  strategy  many  an  armored  barrack  that  sent  forth  its  black 
uniformed  quota  to  protect  the  crowbar  brigade  in  the  old  rackrenting  and«evict- 
ing  days  now  lies  a  blackened  ruin,  open  to  the  rejoicing  Irish  winds — ^and  there 
shall  the  donkey  stable  and  the  robins  nest." 
What  American  will  not  agree  with  the  Scottish  Jurist,  Sir  Robert  Reid,  afterwards 
Lord  Chancellor,  who  stated  of  one  of  the  exposures  of  police  rule  in  Ireland? — 

"I  do  not  think  a  blacker  instance  could  be  produced  from  the  later  history  of 
despotic  governments  in  Europe  to  show  the  frightful  danger  of  having  a  police 
force  free  from  any  public  control." 

52 


CRIMES  ATTRIBUTED  TO  AMERICAN  PATRIOTS. 

The  world  had  not  communication  by  cables  in  1776,  and  the  area  of  influence  of  the 
English  press  was  limited,  but  wherever  it  went  it  carried  charges  of  the  lawlessness  and 
criminality  of  the  Colonists.  Lord  Dunmore,  Governor  of  Virginia  (1)  "planted  gims 
around  his  palace  to  defend  himself,"  and  later  fled  with  his  family,  claiming  that  they 
were  about  to  be  murdered. 

The  "discovery  of  diabolical  plots"  (2) — smuggling  or  seizure  of  ammimition  (3) — 
cattle-driving-  (4)  and  murder  of  Colonists  friendly  to  England  (5)  were  identical  with 
English  despatches  about  Ireland  and  Irishmen  to-day;  while  the  proclamation  of  "a 
certain  PATRICK  HENRY  of  the  County  of  Hanover  and  a  number  of  deluded  followers 
.  .  exciting  the  people  to  join  in  these  outrages  and  rebellious  practices,  to  the  great 
terror  of  His  Majesty's  subjects  and  in  defiance  of  the  law  and  government"  (6)  is  almost 
identical  with  the  charges  in  Lord  French's  proclamations  of  Irishmen  in  1920. 

There  is  no  difference  between  the  "Crimes  Attributed  to  Sinn  Fein"  and  those  attributed 
to  the  Colonists  of  Washington's  day. 

(1)  London  Daily  Advertiser,    July  11,  1775. 

(2)  "  "  "  July  19,  1775. 

(3)  "      "      "     July  4  and  11,  1775  and  January  8,  1776. 

(4)    July  7,  1776. 

(5)  "     "     "     August  7,  1775.* 

(6)    July  6.  1775. 


53 


VI. 

1916  AND  1920. 

If,  as  Byron  exclaimed,  "Freedom  shrieked  when  Kosciusko  fell" — then  Freedom  lay 
prone  in  a  swoon  as  of  death  when  the  men  of  1916  fell  before  Maxwell's  bullets,  and  their 
bodies  by  his  orders  were  flung  into  pits  of  quicklime, 

PEARSE  —  CLARKE  —  CONNOLLY  —  MACDERMOTT  —  KENT  —  PLUNKETT 
— MACDONAGH— and  the  rest  of  that  band  of  lofty  souls;  THE  O'RAHILLY  falling 
dead  on  the  streets  of  Dublin;  these  the  Irish  people  have  definitely  enrolled  among  their 
national  heroes. 

But  there  were  other  murders  than  those  of  the  leaders  in  1916  that  rest  upon  the  soul 
of  England.  Not  all  of  these  were  even  killed  in  the  heat  of  battle,  and  so  it  is  that  to 
understand  the  enormity  of  the  outrages  in  North  King  Street,  Dublin,  and  other  deaths 
of  civilians  by  English  bullets,  it  is  perhaps  necessary  to  know  the  character  of  the  Irish 
"rebels"  and  how  they  fought. 

This,  too,  we  shall  learn  frsm  the  lips  of  Englishmen: 

1.  Sir  Francis  Vane,  second  in  command  of  the  British  forces  employed  to  crush  the 
rising,  stated  publicly  later  and  the  statement  was  repeatedly  published,  that  while  as  a 
veteran  of  the  British  army  he  had  fought  in  many  parts  of  the  world,  he  had  not  believed 
it  possible,  until  he  looked  on  those  young  Irish  rebels,  that  men  covdd  fight  so  cleanly, 
so  chivalrously.  He  subsequently  lost  his  status  in  the  British  antiy  for  openly  claiming 
that  the  rebels  were  justified  in  fighting  for  their  country — and  that  following  their  rebel- 
lion the  Sinn  Fein  political  policy  was  the  only  policy  for  a  self-respecting  Ireland. 

2.  Captain  Robert  Barton,  a  wealthy  Protestant  landowner  of  Wicklow,  who  was 
a  volunteer  British  officer  aiding  to  crush  the  Rising  was  so  impressed  with  the  high  charac- 
ter and  arguments  of  the  men  he  fought  and  later  supervised  as  prisoners — ^that  he  joined 
the  ranks  of  the  Irish  Republican  Party  as  soon  as  possible.  He  is  now  a  member  of  the 
Irish  Congress  and  in  jail  imder  a  long  sentence. 

"THEY  FOUGHT  LIKE  GENTLEMEN." 

3. — Captain  R.  K.  Bereton,  who  was  with  ten  other  English  prisoners  held  by  the  Irish 
for  several  days,  stated  on  May  14,  1916: 

"What  impressed  me  most  was  the  international  tone  adopted  by  the  Sinn  Fein 
officers.  They  were  not  out  for  massacre,  for  burning  or  for  loot.  They  were  out 
for  war,  observing  all  the  rules  of  warfare  and  fighting  clean.  So  far  as  I  saw  they 
fought  like  gentlemen.  They  had  possession  of  the  restaurant  in  the  (Four) 
Courts,  stocked  with  spirits  and  champagne  and  other  wines,  yet  there  were  no 
signs  of  drinking.  I  was  informed  that  they  were  all  total  abstainers.  They 
treated  their  prisoners  with  the  utmost  courtesy  and  consideration,  in  fact 
they  proved  by  their  conduct  that  they  were  men  of  education,  incapable  of 
acts  of  brutality." 

Hon.  Herbert  H.  Asquith,  Prime  Minister  of  England,  stated  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
May  11,  1916: 

"So  far  as  the  great  body  of  insurgents  are  concerned,  I  have  no  hesitation  in 
saying  in  public  they  conducted  themselves  with  a  humanity  which  contrasted 
very  much  to  their  advantage  with  some  of  the  so-called  civilized  enemies  which 
we  are  fighting  in  Eiirope.  That  admission  I  gladly  make.  They  fought  very 
bravely  and  did  not  resort  to  outrage." 

.  The  correspondent  of  the  London  Times  declared: 

"Civilians,  whether  they  were  English  or  Irish,  were  not  interfered  with  by  the 
Sinn  Feiners." 

Heywood  in  the  Daily  Chronicle  of  London: 

"The  Sinn  Feiners  treated  their  prisoners  with  every  courtesy  and  respect." 

54 


POGROM  ON  NORTH  KING  STREET. 

Fifteen  absolutply  unoffending  non-combatants  were  massacred  in  the  vicinity  of  North 
King  Street,  DubUn,  between  Friday  6  P.  M.  and  Saturday  10  P.  M.  of  Easter  week  by 
the  2nd  Company,  6th  South  Staff ords  Regiment  of  the  British  Army  under  the  command 
of  Lt.  Col.  H.  Taylor.  None  of  the  victims  had  any  connection  whatever  with  the  insur- 
rection; some  of  them  had  opposed  it.  None  of  the  murders  was  done  during  a  sudden 
attack  or  in  the  heat  of  passion.     They  were  most  brutally  cold-blooded. 

The  ill-fated  victims  were  arbitrarily  torn  from  their  families,  without  a  moment's  respite 
or  warning.  The  houses  in  which  they  were  taken  were  never  at  any  time  occupied  by 
the  Irish  Volunteers,  and  no  traces  of  arms  or  munitions  were  found  on  the  premises. 

Mention  of  these  military  murders  was  purposely  held  back  in  the  British  Hovise  of 
Commons,  and  repeated  attempts  to  have  a  public  enquiry  into  them  were  always  balked 
by  the  British  Government. 

STORY  OF  ONE  MURDER. 

From  the  statement  of  Anne  Fennel,  a  lodger  in  the  house  174,  North  King  Street 
where  George  Ennis  and  Michael  Noonan  were  killed: 

".  .  .  It  was  between  5  and  6  a.  m.  on  Easter  Saturday  morning  the  mili- 
tary burst  into  the  shop.  There  were  one  or  more  officers  in  command  and  about 
30  soldiers.  They  bvu^t  in  like  wild  beasts  and  shouted  harshly  at  us.  We 
four  were  in  the  back  parlor  behind  the  shop.  ...  As  poor  Mrs.  Ennis  saw  her 
husband  being  led  upstairs  she  clung  to  him  and  refusqd  to  be  parted  from  him 
and  said:  'I  must  go  with  my  husband.'  One  of  the  soldiers  pulled  her  off  and 
put  a  bayonet  to  her  ear  uttering  the  foulest  language.     She  said,  "You  would 

not  kill  a  woman,  would  you?'     He  shouted,  'Keep  quiet,  you  b b .' 

They  then  took  the  two  men  upstairs  and  left  us  women  in  the  shop  and  told  us 
not  to  move  at  peril  of  our  lives."  (The  two  frightened  women  heard  the  soldiers 
searching  the  house.) 

"After  a  long  time,  it  must  have  been  ...  we  heard  a  noise  at  the  parlor  door, 
and  to  our  horror  poor  Mr.  Ennis  crawled  in.  I  will  never  forget.  He  was  dying, 
bleeding  to  death,  and  when  the  military  left  the  house  he  had  crept  down  the 
stairs,  to  see  his  wife  for  the  last  time.  He  was  covered  with  blood  and  his  eyes 
were  rolling  in  his  head. 

"He  said  to  his  wife:  'Oh  Kate,  they  have  killed  me!'  She  said,  'My  God, 
for  what?'  He  said,  'For  nothing'  ...  I  was  terrified  and  asked  the  dying  man 
— 'Wotild  they  kill  us  all?'  He  spoke  very  kindly  to  us  and  told  us  they  would 
not  touch  us  ...  He  said,  'They  killed  poor  Noonan,  too.'  .  .  .  Poor  Mr. 
Ennis  did  not  live  more  than  twenty  minutes  after  he  came  in  to  us." 

MURDER  OF  AMERICAN  CITIZEN. 

From  statement  by  the  mother  of  Peter  Lawless: 

"My  son,  Peter  Lawless,  was  21  years  of  age  and  was  bom  in  New  York,  and 
was  consequently  a  citizen  of  the  United  States.  During  Easter  week  I  occupied 
the  house  No.  27  North  King  Street,  known  as  the  South  Dairy. 

"The  military  came  to  our  house  between  8  and  9  on  Saturday  morning.  At 
that  time  they  must  have  already  slaughtered  the  nine  poor  people  in  the  houses 
opposite.  .  .  .  We  had  been  sitting  on  the  stairs  for  safety.  During  the  night 
and  when  the  firing  seemed  to  have  ceased  we  went  upstairs,  thinking  of  going 
to  bed.  .  .  .  Just  then  we  heard  a  great  hammering  and  knocking  at  the  door 
and  the  soldiers  shouting  outside.  Soon  a  bayonet  was  thrust  through  the  panel 
of  the  hall  door.  I  heard  my  son  below  opening  the  door,  which  was  followed  . 
by  the  inrush  of  soldiers.  I  heard  my  son  saying,  'Mother,  you  all  go  up  stairs 
to  the  top  room;  these  men  are  only  doing  their  duty.  You  need  not  be  fright- 
ened.' The  four  men  were  then  driven  up  after  us.  .  .  .  The  soldiers  then  Uned 
us  all  around  the  room  with  hands  up. 

■'I  asked  them,  'What  are  we  here  for?  What  have  we  done?'  The  man  in 
charge  replied,  'We  must  take  these  men  prisoners.'  I  said,  'Where  are  you 
going  to  take  them?'  'To  the  nearest  barracks,  I  suppose,'  he  repUed.  Some 
one  then  said,  'That  is  all  right;  the  police  will  tell  you  who  we  are.'  .  .  .  We 
women  who  were  in  great  terror  were  then  ordered  out  in  charge  of  some  soldiers. 
As  I  passed  out,  my  poor  son,  who  stood  near  the  door,  came  to  the  landing  to 
try  and  reassure  me  and  said,  'Mother,  it  will  be  all  right.  You  go  to  Britain 
Street.     I'll  find  you  there.' 

55 


"The  soldiers  then  brought  us  down.  ...  In  the  evening  I  returned  to  our 
house  accompanied  by  a  soldier.  A  sentry  was  on  guard  at  my  door  and  .  .  .  said, 
'You  can't  go  in  there!  There  are  four  dead  men  in  there.'  Terrified,  I  said, 
'Four  dead  men!  Are  they  soldiers  or  Volunteers?'  .  .  .  'Neither;  civilians.' 
...  'I  left  four  men  there,  and  I'm  going  in  to  see.  If  you  shot  them,  you  may 
shoot  me,  too.'     I  shoved  past  him  on  to  the  top  landing. 

"And  then  a  scene  of  horror,  .  .  .  My  son  lay  dead  in  the  same  spot  I  had  left 
him.  .  .  .  his  body  half  in  and  half  out  the  doorway.  Poor  Mr.  McCarthy  lay 
dead  against  the  wall  in  a  sitting  position.  Their  brains  had  bespattered  the 
curtain.  Poor  Finnigan  .  .  .  had  fallen  dead  across  the  bed.  Patrick  Hoey 
.  .  .  must  have  received  fearful  treatment  as  his  head  was  burst  open  and  macer- 
ated. .  .  . 

"I  was  overcome  with  horror!" 

"OH,  DON'T  KILL  FATHER!»» 

The  statements  of  the  wives  and  mothers  of  the  other  victims  are  equally  pathetic. 
Few  could  hear  tmmoved  the  story  of  the  horror  at  No.  170,  where  the  boy,  Chris.  Hickey, 
his  father  and  Peter  Connolly  were  slaughtered.  The  lad  had  obeyed  the  soldiers'  various 
orders  without  a  murmixr,  until  the  three  were  lined  up  to  be  shot.  Then  the  old  servant 
lying  in  terror  on  the  floor  of  the  room  without,  heard  the  devoted  boy's  voice  raised  in 
piercing  supplication:    "Oh,  don't  kill  father!" 

The  mother,  who  had  gone  out  for  food  before  the  military  entered  and  whose  return 
was  delayed  by  heavy  firing  in  the  street,  said  in  her  statement: 

"...  When  I  rushed  into  the  room,  there  I  saw  my  poor  angel,  my  darling 
son.  He  was  lying  on  the  ground,  his  face  darkened,  and  his  two  hands  raised 
above  his  head  as  if  in  silent  supplication.  I  kissed  him  and  put  his  little  cap 
under  his  head  and  settled  his  hands  for  death. 

"Then  I  turned  and  in  another  place  close  by  I  saw  poor  Tom,  lying  on  the 
ground.  'O  Jesus!'  I  cried,  'my  husband,  too!' — and  not  far  off  lay  the  corpse 
of  poor  Connolly. 

"I  reeled  round,  and  remember  no  more.  .  .  ." 

THE  BATTLE  OF  MOUNTJOY. 

The  patriotic  fires  of  1916  are  still  alive  in  Ireland:  the  contest  begun  then  has  never 
relaxed.  It  varies  in  strategy,  but  never  in  aim — as  the  spirited  little  land  of  4,300,000 
\nKthstands  the  efforts  of  an  Empire  to  throw  it  back  into  political  slavery. 

Another  milestone  in  this  contest  on  the  way  to  Ireland's  freedom  was  the  Himger- 
Strike  undertaken  on  Easter  Monday,  1920,  by  104  Irish  men  and  boys  in  Mountjoy 
Jail.     As  stated  editorially  by  Old  Ireland,  April  24,  1920,  of  these  prisoners: 

"...  They  were  not  a  picked  phalanx,  but  a  scratch  crew  selected  on  the 
'hand-in-a-hat'  principle  which  seems  to  govern  the  Castle,  gathered  together 
from  all  over  Ireland  and  of  all  conditions  and  of  all  ages.  One  thing  they  had 
In  common,  their  Republicanism,  their  courage  never  to  submit  or  yield,  their 
obstinate  adhesion  to  a  principle.  There  was  hardly  a  well-known  Sinn  Fein 
leader  among  them.  There  was  no  concerted  plan  of  action.  They  did  not 
provoke  the  battle,  but  they  won  it.  England  provoked  it  and  lost  it.  Even 
when  within  a  few  hours  of  death,  their  resolution  never  faltered  ..." 

The  strike  was  the  usual  one  of  protest  against  imprisorunent  and  treatment  as  crim- 
inals. As  it  advanced  crowds  of  sympathizers  surrounded  the  Jail  day  and  night,  in 
rain  or  sun.  The  English  troops  then  came  with  tanks,  armored  cars,  barbed  wire,  aero- 
planes and  searchlights.  As  the  second  week  of  fasting  began  and  the  prisoners  grew  grad- 
ually weaker,  the  sympathy  of  tens  of  thousands  outside  with  their  suffering  brethren 
within  grew  to  passion  and  at  times  to  threats  of  violence,  which  were  only  dispelled  by 
a  woman  leading  all  in  vocal  prayer. 

The  prisoners'  ages  ranged  from  fifteen  to  forty-five  years.  They  came  from  every 
province  in  Ireland,  from  north  and  south.  Like  thousands  of  others  since  1916,  they 
were  seized  without  warning  and  held  without  charge.  When  they  began  their  fast  they 
were  wanted  by  the  British  Govemment  they  must  "Surrender  or  die!" 

"  'Death,'  answered  ...  all  of  the  hundred  and  four  men  and  boys  .  .  ..for  a 
principle  that  was  to  them  as  sacred  and  immutable  as  their  faith  in  God,  and  dearer 
than  their  earthly  lives.  ...  In  the  end  the  British  Govemrnent  was  forced  to 

66 


realize  how  impotent  was  brute  materialism,  with  all  its  bayonets  and  guns 
and  tanks  and  aeroplanes,  in  conflict  with  dauntless  souls  .  .  .  and  with  very  bad 
grace  and  just  in  time  to  save  itself  from  a  verdict  of  wilful  murder,  it  siuren- 
dered." 

Old  Ireland,  April  24,  1920. 

After  their  removal  to  the  hospital,  one  of  their  number,  Francis  Gleason,  died — too 
weakened  to  sustain  an  operation  that  became  necessary. 

LAUGHTERIGONEiFROM  IRELAND. 

Lord  Curzon  in  a  public  address  in  1918  claimed  that  the  English  were  "the  knights- 
errant  of  civilization"  in  this  age,  fighting  for  weaker  nations  the  world  over.  Yet  with 
an  English  army  of  occupation  in  Ireland  against  the  wll  of  the  Irish  people,  an  Ameri- 
can officer  rettuTiing  to  New  York  last  January  reported  to  the  press: 

"Ireland  is  a  land  of  whispers.  .  .  .  Laughter  is  gone  from  it.     Even  the  smiles 
are  ghastly.     People  walk  with  a  brooding  terror  over  them!" 

"ENGLAND  SHOULD  KISS  THE  HEM  OF  IRELAND'S  GARMENT." 

Is  there  anyone  who  still  fails  to  get  a  right  perspective  of  the  Irish  struggle?  Is  there 
anyone  who  could  not  read  the  agony  in  the  thoughts  of  the  yoimg  Irish  coimtry  lads 
fighting  under  the  British  flag  in  France  that  Easter  Week  "to  rid  the  world  of  oppression 
...  to  shield  small  nations"?  Is  there  anyone  who  can  withhold  an  exclamation  of  amazed 
admiration  with  Chesterton — that  there  could  be  found  in  Ireland  any  men  who  "... 
marched  out  imder  the  flag  of  their  own  oppressor  to  fight  to  give  other  nations  a  liberty 
that  was  denied  to  their  own?"  Who  would  not  exclaim  with  him,  too — that  "England 
should  kiss  the  hem  of  Ireland's  garment  for  her  wonderful  magnanimity  .  .  .  !" 

And  who  to-day  will  dare  to  breathe  a  word  of  censure  upon  those  patriots  of  Ireland, 
more  comprehendingly  alert  for  the  needs  of  Ireland  itself,  niore  conscious  of  the  national 
extinction  that  lay  in  belief  in  England's  promises — ^and  who  fought  for  Liberty  at  home 
finst? 

These  are  some  of  the  British  outrages  in  the  Ireland  of  to-day.  To  men  and  women 
of  Irish  blood  they  are  but  sharp  echoes  of  others  even  more  terrible  that  are  past,  but 
which  still  live  in  the  blood  of  the  race  that  in  every  generation  since  1172  has  known  the 
bayonet,  the  bullet,  and  the  crowbar. 

IRELAND'S  AGONY  CARVED  DEEP. 

And  so  it  was  that  the  poet  soul  of  Walt  Whitman,  who  had  never  seen  Ireland,  could 
yet  plumb  her  grief  in  the  lines  of  agony  carved  indestructibly  in  the  souls  of  her  children 
—her  Lewises  and  Moylans  and  Carrolls,  her  Jacksons  and  Clebumes  and  Mitchels — and 
proclaim  her — 

"Of  all  the  earth  most  full  of  sorrow, 
Because  most  full  of  love," 
But  her  Day  has  come. 

A  new  generation  of  patriot  sons,  proudly  determined,  heroic  and  fearless  as  any  who 
have  gone  before,  has  risen  beside  her  home-hearth  and  hold  her  fortunes  in  fee  there. 

And  already  there  are  men  in  England  who  cry  with  enlarged  souls:  "Our  Shame  in 
Ireland — ^How  Long?" 

While  from  every  comer  of  God's  earth  into  which  the  Irish  race  or  the  spirit  of  Liberty 
has  penetrated,  firm  voices  are  lifted  with  those  who  guard  her  hearth,  crying,  as  Whit- 
man once  did,  to  her — 

"Yet  a  word,  ancient  mother; 

You  need  crouch  there  no  longer 
On  the  cold  ground,  with  forehead 
Between  your  knees: 
Oh,  you  need  not  sit  there  ..." 

No,  she  need  not  longer,  for  we  are  going  to  lift  her  up — ^let  Empires  and  Chancellories 
croak  as  they  may — ^and  we  are  going  to  place  upon  her  dear  sorrowbent  head  a  Crown. 
It  will  be  the  Crown  of  a  free  people's  love — the  Crown  of  a  God-anointed  Democracy. 


67 


VII. 


AMERICA'S  INTEREST  IN  THIS. 

"The  question  for  America  now  is  simply  this — which  will  it  recognize  as  the 
official  organ  of  the  Irish  Nation,  the  alien  government  of  Might  or  the  native 
government  of  Right?  The  one  has  no  sanction  but  that  of  brute  force;  the  other 
has  the  supreme  democratic  and  moral  sanction  of  the  consent  of  the  governed. 

"Can  Americans  hesitate  in  deciding  what  it  shall  be? 

Will  America's  place  not  be  to-day  also  on  the  side  of  free  institutions?" 

President  de  Valera,  April  7,  1920. 

America  is  to-day  intervening  in  the  contest  between  the  Irish  Nation  and  the  English. 
Officially  supporting  in  Ireland  an  alien  government  of  Might.  In  History  the  American 
people  will  be  held  responsible  for  this.     The  facts  to-day  are: 


The  American  administration  is  offi- 
cially recognizing  the  Government  of 
Might  superimposed  by  the  military 
force  of  England  upon  the  Irish  people 
and  the  Irish  Congress  elected  by  them 
in  December,  1918. 


The  American  administration  is  about 
to  receive  Sir  Auckland  Geddes  as  the 
Ambassador  of  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that 
the  Irish  people  and  their  lawfully-con- 
stituted government  repudiate  his  pre- 
tensions to  Ambassadorship  for  Ireland. 


Both  Houses  of  Congress  have  passed 
resolutions  which  are  tantamount  to 
acknowledging  Ireland's  right  now  to 
the  Independence  she  has  declared — 
(For  a  complete  acknowledgment  of 
this  Independence  the  recognition  of 
the  President  of  the  United  States  is 
required.) 

The  overwhelming  majority  of  the 
American  people  desire  the  freedom 
of  Ireland — the  recognition  of  the  inde- 
pendent republican  form  of  Government 
already  established  by  the  Irish  people. 
Lieut, -Go vomor  McDowell  of  Montana 
aptly  expressed  this  fact  in  his  state- 
ment— 

"If  the  question  of  Irish  Independence 
were  left  to  a  plebiscite  of  the  American 
people,  Ireland  would  be  free  in  •  the 
morning." 

It  is  beyond  question  that  the  recognition  of  the  Irish  Republic  by  America — the  greatest 
and  strongest  cotmtry  in  the  world  to-day,  the  country  which  was  the  decisive  factor  in 
ending  the  Great  War — would  promptly  lead  to  recognition  by  other  nations — and  so  to 
Irish  Freedom. 

AMERICA  MADE  ENGLAND  DEBTOR. 

Having  displayed  all  her  own  resoiu-ces  and  drawn  upon  all  the  might  of  her  Imperial 
resources — with  France  and  Italy  and  Japan  aiding  her — England  found  herself  in  March 
1918  driven  to  the  wall  by  Germany.  ("Our  backs  are  against  the  wall."— Haig.)  Then 
she  sent  up  a  final,  terribly  urgent  call  for  America's  immediate  help  in  her  war  "against 
militarism  and  autocratic  forces  of  oppression." 

America  responded — and  it  remains  an  incontrovertible  fact  that  by  this  country's 
marvelous  outpouring  of  men,  money  and  mvmitions,  she  became  the  decisive  factor  in 
winning  the  world  war. 

America  had  already  lent  over  $4,500,000,000  to  England  and  as  much  more  to  her 
Allies.  She  poured  out  many  other  billions  and  she  sent  over  2,000,000  of  her  finest 
sons  to  the  holocaust  of  war. 

Upon  what  grounds  did  the  leaders  of  the  American  people  receive  this  unprecedented 
ofiFering? 

58 


upon  these  grounds: — 

"We  .  .  .  fight  thus  .  .  .  for  the  rights  of  nations,  great  and  small,  and  the 
privilege  of  men  everj^where  to  choose  their  way  of  life  and  of  obedience  .  .  . 
for  democracy,  for  the  right  of  those  who  submit  to  authority  to  have  a  voice  in 
their  own  governments,  for  the  rights  and  liberty  of  small  nations.  .  .  .  " — (Ad- 
dress of  President  Wilson  to  Congress,  when  calling  upon  that  body  to  vote  for 
war  and  send  the  young  manhood  of  America  into  the  cockpit  of  Europe.) 

Again  upon  these  grounds  when  money  was  wanted  from  the  people: 

"We  have  entered  this  war  for  an  ideal — ^the  right  to  liberty,  happiness,  oppor- 
tunity— ^not  for  ourselves  alone,  but  for  all  the  peoples  of  all  the    world." — 

(Extract  from  circular  appeals  for  Liberty  Loan  being  made  in  November,  1918.) 
,  These  appeals  were  made  deliberately,  for  nothing  else  would  have  moved  to  approval 
of  the  war  a  nation — the  majority  of  which  did  not,  even  in  1917,  want  to  become  embroiled 
in  a  European  war. 

Just  such  appeals  were  made  on  the  direct  instructions  of  the  Chief  Executive  by  one 
known  to  the  writer,  whom  he  sent  throughout  the  covmtry  to  groups  of  organized  labour, 
to  reconcile  them  to  America  undertaking  this  war. 

The  American  hosts  went  out — and  by  sea  or  by  land  a  notably  great  proportion  of 
these  were  men  of  Irish  blood.  They  went  as  chivalrously  as  the  Irishmen  who  crossed 
the  seas  after  Franklin's  call  for  help  in  1771.  The  Irish  soldiers  of  1776  braved  the  for- 
tunes of  battle  and  the  lingering  death  of  the  prison  ship  for  the  liberty  of  America.  The 
American  of  Irish  blood  returning  over  the  seas  in  1918  believed  he  fought  for  Ireland's 
freedom — in  fighting,  as  the  President  and  Congress  had  decided,  "for  the  rights  and 
liberty  of  smaU  nations." 

ENGLAND'S  INTERPRETATION  OF  AMERICAN  AIMS. 

It  is  an  indisputable  fact  that  England  in  receiving  America's  help  knew  exactly  the 
aims  and  terms  (they  might  be  called)  upon  which  the  American  people  came  to  her  aid 
against  Germany. 

These  extracts  from  Irish  newspapers  as  reproductions  of  recruiting  advertisements 
published  in  1918,  by  the  English  Military  authorities  confirm  their  knowledge  of  America's 
aims — ^ideals — terms: 

"America  has  come  into  the  war — ^America  in  whose  first  assertion  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  freedom  for  herself  in  the  War  of  Independence  Irishmen  took  a  leacUng 
share;  America  in  whose  great  army  half  a  million  men  of  Irish  blood  are  to-day 
enrolled  to  assert  the  principle  of  freedom  for  the  whole  world.  Before  the  fifth 
year  of  the  war  has  passed  the  armies  of  America  and  the  Allies  will  have  won  the 
war  and  established  in  President  Wilson's  words  the  reign  of  law  based  upon  the 
consent  of  the  governed  and  sustained  by  the  organized  opinion  of  mankind."  .  .  . 

"What  is  the  security  that  the  victory  of  the  Allies  will  mean  the  rule  of  justice 
(in  Ireland)?  The  security  is  the  fact  that  American  soldiers  are  coming  to 
France  at  the  rate  of  10,000  a  day;  that  President  Wilson  is  the  moial  leader 
of  the  Allies  and  that  he  has  proclaimed  as  their  first  war  aim  after  the  defeat  of 
Germany  'the  settlement  of  every  question  whether  of  territory  or  sovereignty, 
of  economic  arrangement  or,  of  political  relationship  upon  the  basis  of  the  free 
acceptance  of  that  settlement  by  the  people  immediately  concerned  and  not  upon 
the  basis  of  the  material  interest  or  advantage  of  any  other  nation  or  people  which 
may  desire  a  different  settlement  for  the  sake  of  its  own  exterior  influence  or 
mastery.'  " 

"The  Tenth  (Irish)  Division  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  the  Crusaders  and 
fought  in  the  same  cause — ^the  cause  of  the  Cross,  in  the  eternal  struggle  between 
liberty  and  tyrarmy.  It  fought  that  cause  far  from  Ireland;  but  that  cause  is  no 
less  Ireland's  cause.  The  Tenth  Divisi,on  fought  for  the  liberation  of  the  small 
nations  oppressed  by  Germany  and  her  Allies;  but  it  fought  also  for  Ireland's 
place  in  a  world  of  freedom — ^the  world  of  freedom  in  whid^  all  the  resources  of 
America  are  pledged  to  establish  'the  right  of  law  based  upon  the  consent  of  the 
governed  and  sustained  by  the  organized  opinion  of  mankind.'  " 

Read  in  the  light  of  subsequent  happenings  the  cynicism  and  falsity  of  these  official 
British  declarations  are  diabolical. 

59 


What  did  Bonar  Law  mean  speaking  in  the  British  House  of  Commons  on  the  19th 
of  April,  1917,  when  he  said, 

"America's  Aims  and  ideals  are  those  of  the  Allies." 

There  are  a  few  protagonists  of  Britain  in  this  country,  who  refer  feelingly  to  England 
as  "our  gallant  ally  in  the  late  war."  Can  their  "gallant"  ally  afford  to  loose  her  gallantry 
now?  Can  she  hope,  directing  international  settlements  and  adjustments — can  she 
hope  now  in  her  own  lawlessness  to  be  held  beyond  the  Law? 

ENGLAND'S  VIOLATION  OF  HER  OWN  AND  AMERICA'S  TERMS. 

The  war  is  ended. 

Poland,  Bohemia,  Finland,  Armenia,  Georgia  and  other  small  nations  are  freed,  but 
British  statesmen  now  say  that  they  never  intended  the  principle  of  Self- Determination 
to  be  appUed  within  the  Empire. 

Ireland  remains  to-day  subjected  to  a  militarist  Terrorism,  conceded  by  Englishmen  to 
be  more  frightful  than  anything  imposed  on  her  since  the  indescribable  horrors,  half- 
hangings  and  floggings  of  1798.  * 

An  apologist  for  English  interference  in  Ireland — the  British  Unionist  organ,  the  "Irish 
Times" — was  on  Feb.  23,  1920  reduced  to  this  argument  to  justify  it: 

"The  present  government  is  unpopular  with  a  majority  of  Irishmen.  Let  us 
go  further  and  assume  for  the  sake  of  argument  that  it  is  an  arbitrary  government 
which  consistently  abuses  its  power.  At  the  worst,  however,  it  is  not  nearly  so  ar- 
bitrary as  was  the  Roman  Government  to  which  Cluist  and  St.  Paul  rendered  strict 
obedience," 

Was  it  to  support  in  a  Twentieth-Century  World  a  government  no  better  than  that 
of  pagan  Rome  over  alien-territories  that  American  boys  suffered  and  died  in  France? 

What  did  Lloyd  George  mean  by  his  solemn  professions  of  1917? — 

"America's  ideals  are  our  ideals" — and  "We  are  in  the  war  for  no  selfish  ends. 
We  are  in  it  to  recover  freedom  for  the  Nations  which  have  been  so  brutally 
attacked.  .  .  .  The  world  is  a  world  for  the  weak  as  for  the  strong." 

WEAKNESS  OF  FONDLING  BRITISH  LION. 

On  Feb.  23,  1920  Winston  Chtirchill  stated  in  the  English  House  of  Commons  that  the 
British  military  in  Ireland  erred  on  the  side  of  weakness.  This  table,  like  that  given 
earlier  (p.  10)  compiled  from  court  and  censored  press  reports,  indicates  the  nature  of  their 
"weakness": — 


"Week  ending 

Feb.  7 

Feb.  14 

Feb,  21 

Feb.  28 

Total 

Murders 

2 

1 

3 

Raids 

469 

1199 

1255 

1197 

4120 

Arrests 

122 

262 

59 

90 

523 

Sentences 

13 

7 

2 

8 

30 

Proclamations  &  Suppressions 

2 

3 

6 

.    9 

20 

Courts-Martial 

2 

1 

6 

1 

10 

Aniied  assaults 

2 

6 

8 

6 

22 

Deportations 

— 

63 

2 

8 

73 

Total  for  February,  1920  4,801       ' 

If  the  British  Lion  in  his  weakness  is  only  fondling  Ireland,  is  it  not  as  true  to-day — 
".  .  .  the  Lion  fondles  ere  it  kills?" 


•"THREE  YEARS'  JAILINGS  IN  IRELAND:  ENGLISH  GOVERNMENT  REFUSES  FIG- 
URES:— In  the  English  House  of  Commons,  Capt.  W.  Benn  asked  the  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland  how  many 
persons  were  convicted  in  Ireland  during  the  past  year  under  the  Crimes  Act  or  the  Defense  of  the  Realm 
Act,  and  the  nature  of  ^he  sentences.  Lord  Henry  Cavendish  Bentinck  asked  how  many  persons  in  Ireland 
in  the  last  three  years  had  been  tried  by  a  single  resident  ma^strate:  whether  this  procedure  was  adopted 
because  of  the  large  percentage  of  cases  dismissed  by  the  magistrates  in  Petty  Sessions;  how  many  persons 
were  now  in  prison  for  politick  or  seditious  offenses;  how  many  ,of  these  were  sentenced  by  courts-martial, 
Civil  Courts  or  Crimes  Co»irt,  and  the  nature  of  the  offenses. 

"Mr.  MacPherson  replying  said  that  the  investigation  necessary  to  give  answers  to  the  questions  would 
impose  so  great  an  amount  of  work  on  the  already  over-burdened  police  in  Ireland  that  he  could  not  ask  them 
to  bear  the  additional  burden." — (See  Hansard,  Nov.  13,  Col.  230.) 

60 


SPONTANEOUS  AMERICAN  PROTEST. 

The  spirit  of  true  Americanism  throbbed  in  this  protest  made  by  some  indignant  reader 
of  the  Pittsburg  Dispatch  in  the  autumn  of  1919: 

"The  telegraphic  news  printed  in  large  type  on  the  front  page  of  this  morning's 
Dispatch  is  the  climax;  it  is  the  last  straw.  Here  it  is:  'CRUSHING  IRISH 
REPUBLIC.  PARLIAMENT  IS  SUPPRESSED.  SOLDIERS  RAID  SINN 
FEINERS  OVER  IRELAND.  CLUBS  AND  HOMES  SEARCHED.  MANY 
PRISONERS  CAPTURED,  ETC  Great  God!  Is  this  what  we  are  getting 
as  a  result  of  the  four  years'  war  that  was  fought  for  'the  rights  of  small  nations; 
that  the  world  might  be  made  safe  for  democracy?'  Have  we  fought  and  con- 
quered one  tyrant,  one  enemy  of  liberty,  only  to  strengthen  and  more  firmly  en- 
trench another?  Are  we,  who  have  saved  England  from  being  made  a  German 
province,  to  stand  by  and  calmly  witness  this  act  of  oppression,  this  act  of  Medi- 
eval feudalism  and  barbarism,  without  making  a  protest?" 

Notwithstanding  the  facts  set  out  here  from  British  Court  records,  the  British  Am- 
X.        bassador  Geddes  could  make  the  ridiculous  claim  that  "this  generation  of  Englishmen 
has  steadfastly  refused  to  quarrel  with  Ireland,"  and  Lloyd  George,  at  the  close  of  the 
San  Remo  conference  this  spring,  sent  a  message  to  Britain's  womanhood  that — 

"Militarism  with  its  horrors  and  dangers  is  to  be  kept  under  wherever  it  threat- 
ens the  peace  of  the  world." 

Was  there  not  a  note  of  limitation  in  that  speech — of  militarism  to  be  permitted  to 
flourish  in  lands  forcibly  held  by  Britain,  and  condemned  only  in  her  rival  powers? 

It  is  evident  that  the  moral  vision  of  British  statesmen  is  altogether  obscured  with 
regard  to  Ireland.  They  have  to  be  roused  to  their  duty  and  to  the  moral  obUgations 
they  incurred,  when  they  secured  the  aid  of  American  men  and  money  to  save  their  forces 
from  defeat. 

But  the  American  Government  must  for  its  own  honour  and  the  maintenance  of  Amer- 
ica's reputation  in  history,  fulfil  the  moral  obligations  it  incurred  in  calling  out  its  man- 
hood to  fight  in  the  name  of  Liberty  for  nations  great  and  small  as  it  did  in  April,  1917. 

HISTORY  WILL  HOLD  AMERICA  RESPONSIBLE. 

In  the  last  analysis— failing  action  in  the  Chief  Executive  who  solemnly  pledged  his 
country's  honor  to  these  ideals  on  April  3,  1917 — ^it  is  for  the  American  people  to  urge 
the  fulfilment  of  his  and  their  moral  obligations  as  Americans,  their  unfulfilled  obligations 
to  the  dead  American  soldiers  in  France. 

This  they  can  only  do  by  compelling  the  recognition  of  governments  lawfully  selected 
by  majorities  in  nations  demanding  their  liberty.  This  the  primal  law  of  gratitude  must 
impel  them  to  do,  especially  in  the  case  of  Ireland — America's  first  Ally,  the  country  to 
which  Martha  Washington's  son*  returned  thanks  more  than  once: 

"Let  me  say:  When  you  felt  the  full  force  of  the  Lion's  merciless  fangs,  who 
first  gave  you  aid,  not  of  words,  but  of  deeds?  .  .  .  When  our  friendless  standard  was 
first  imfurled  for  resistance,  who  were  the  strangers  that  first  mustered  'round  its 
staff,  and  "when  it  reeled  in  the  fight,  who  more  bravely  sustained  it  than  Erin's 
generous  sons?" 

I  And  again: 

"Eternal  gratitude  to  Irishmen!" 

Voicing  this  "eternal  gratitude"  and  with  it  unalterable  American  ideals  of  the  Liberty 
of  Man — the  will  of  the  American  people  should  rise  like  a  visible  exhalation  and  loom  over 
the  White  House  like  the  shadowy  presence  of  Washington  himself,  bidding  his  successor 
to  do  what  he,  the  Father  of  his  Country,  would  so  gladly  have  done — sign  the  document 
that  would  end  British  outrages  in  Ireland  and  make  Ireland  free! 

In  history  it  will  be  said  to  be  as  true  of  the  American  people  to-day  as  it  has  been  of 
the  EngUsh  people,  since  Gladstone  declared  to  them  on  Oct.  2,  1891 — this: 

"Millions  of  you  by  your  votes  determine  the  course  which  the  Imperial  policy 
is  to  follow,  and  with  that  power  you  must  accept  the  duties  and  responsibilities 
which  belong  to  it.     If  Ireland  is  oppressed  hereafter  it  will  be  oppressed  by  you." 


*  In  address  at  Washington  City  Hall.  1826. 

61 


A  WARNING  FROM  MT.  VERNON. 

Viewed  in  relation  to  the  sombre  facts  presented  in  this  book,  there  comes  like  a  voice 
from  the  grave  a  solemn  utterance  immediately  applicable  to  America  and  Americans 
to-day.  It  was  that  made  by  George  Washington  Parke  Custis  on  July  20,  1826,  in  the 
City  Hall  at  Washington.  Having  told  what  Irishmen  endured  in  America's  day  of 
struggle  in  "the  privations  of  the  camp,  the  fate  of  battle  and  the  horrors  of  the  prison- 
ship,"  Custis  demanded: 

"And  with  such  revelations  as  these,  can  you,  will  you,  dare  you,  Americans, 
talk  of  interference,  and  withhold  your  voice  from  a  general  acclaim,  which  would 
thunder  in  this  land  till  its  echoes  reach  the  Emerald  Isle,  in  a  prayer  for  her 
deliverance.  If  there  is  an  American  who  does  not  feel  for  the  wrongs  of  that 
country  which  so  nobly  contributed  to  the  establishment  of  our  rights,  I  pro- 
nounce him  recreant  to  the  feelings  of  virtue,  honor  and  gratitude. 

"And  my  country's  self,  if  she  decline  to  give  only  her  poor  opinions  of  the  mis- 
eries of  those  who  gave  their  toil  and  blood  that  she  might  be  great,  free  and  happy, 
when  misfortunes  next  assail  her,  may  she  not  find  the  friend  she  once  found  in 
Ireland." 

This  last  is  a  harsh  invocation  from  the  "Child  of  Mt.  Vernon."  Yet  it  is  but  the  meas- 
ure of  what  he  learned  from  the  great  Washington  himself,  to  be  America's  debt  to 
Ireland. 


62 


iSppenbtx. 


V 


There  has  been  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  Department  of  State  at  Washington  the 
affidavits  and  data  concerning  English  atrocities  in  Ireland,  referred  to  in  these  sections 
of  the  Reply  of  the  Chairman,  American  Commission  on  Irish  Independence,  to  Ian  Mac- 
Pherson,  British  Chief-Secretary  in  Ireland,  reaffirming  the  Commission's  Rejxjrt  of 
British  atrocities  in  Ireland  and  its  demand  for  an  impartial  Committee  of  Investigation 
composed  of  men  who  were  not  citizens  of  either  Great  Britain  or  Ireland: 

VICTIMS  RENDERED  INSANE. 

"We  will  prod.uce  the  records  of  the  jails  and  insane  asylums,  as  well  as  the 
victims  who  have  recovered,  and  the  relatives  of  those  who  have  not,  to  prove 
our  charges  that  numbers  of  Irish  Republicans  were  rendered  insane  by  their 
treatment." 

DEAD,  WOUNDED  AND  DISABLED. 

"We  will  produce  a  list  of  the  dead,  those  who  were  permanently  maimed  and 
disfigured  by  the  atrocities  practised  upon  them;  also  a  list  of  those  whose  health 
has  been  shattered  and  who  have  been  rendered  incurable  invalids  by  their  treat- 
ment, all  accompanied  by  names  and  dates." 

MacPherson,  who  had  categorically  denied  the  charge  of  atrocities  in  a  statement  which 
even  the  London  Times  conceded  to  be  halting  and  evasive,  did  not  call  an  investigation 
nor  examine  the  data  compiled  by  the  Commission. 

After  MacPherson's  denial  the  Irish  Government  proceeded  to  secure  affidavits  from 
the  victims  in  order  to  substantiate,  all  the  material  charges  made.  When  this  became 
known  British  forces  broke  into  the  Headquarters  of  the  Government  and  raided  it  thor- 
oughly but  did  not  secure  the  dociunents  sought.  The  publication  of  letters  and  state- 
ments by  the  victims  was  then  prohibited  by  the  British  censor  in  all  Irish  papers.  Not- 
withstanding the  various  efforts  made  to  suppress  the  facts  the  banned  documents  reached 
the  United  States. 


63 


NOW  READY... 


THE  ^  ESCAPE    FROM     MOUNTJOY'^ 


AND  OTHER  PRISON  EXPERIENCES 
OF  AN  IRISH  VOLUNTEER 


PADRAIC    FLEMING 

(CONVICT  E.  445) 


Written  by 

THE  RECTOR  OF  AN  IRISH  COLLEGE 


FOREWORD  BY  PIARAS  BEASLAI,  T.  D, 


PRICE  25  CENTS  PER  COPY 


Order  from 

FRIENDS  OF  IRISH  FREEDOM,  Inc. 

280  Broadway,    New  York 


:^.  .J- 


Lloyd  George,  speaking  in  the  British 
Parliament  on  March  7,  1917,  stated: 

^'Centuries  of  brutal  and  often  ruthless  in- 
justice, and  what  is  worse . . .  centuries  of  in- 
solence and  insult  have  driven  hatred  of  British 
rule  into  the  very  marrow  of  the  Irish  race. 
The  long  records  of  oppression,  proscription  and 
expatriation  have  formed  the  greatest  blot  on 
the  British  fame  of  equity  and  eminence  in  the 
realm  of  government.  There  remains  , .  .the 
invincible  fact  that  to-day  she  {Ireland)  is  no 
more  reconciled  to  British  rule  than  she  was  in 
the  days  of  Cromwell." 


